Assessing the Role of Carbon Finance in Cookstove Projects

The project will provide insights on how carbon finance should and should not be used within a project in order to best achieve different objectives (and particularly the wider objective of market transformation). Compiling a sound evidence base can be both time- and resource-consuming. Thus, SEI is taking a multi-step approach:

First, a desktop study will scan a wide range of projects to collect available information on carbon finance and business models. This will include interviews with specific project developers and participants. The purpose of this step is to gather empirical data on the use of carbon finance, in order to categorize different ways in which it has been used in projects to date.

In order to investigate more deeply the impacts of carbon finance not only on projects but also wider impacts in the local market (e.g. non-financial impacts), we will also undertake a series of detailed case studies. These will comprise in-country interviews with different actors in the chain of production and consumption – ranging from users of stoves to local producers, stove designers, “project” proponents, funders, NGOs involved in stove distribution, etc. The interviews will place a focus on incorporating the perspectives of, and impacts on, different people along the chain of project design and implementation.

Case studies will compare experiences in Asia (India) and Africa (Kenya), which given the different contexts and likely impacts in each setting (e.g. with respect to stove design, target groups, actors along value chain, vulnerability to carbon market effects and so on) is likely to be an interesting comparison. These will generate empirical data on the success or failure of individual projects, linking this to the role of carbon finance.