Carbon credits make clean cooking affordable for millions of African households

Mary Kavutha wakes before dawn in her Nairobi home and reaches for her induction cooker. Two years ago, she would have lit a charcoal stove, filling her kitchen with smoke while spending about $1.15 a day on fuel. Now she buys electricity tokens for 80 cents and cooks several meals without the haze that once hung over her workspace. The stove heats faster, and her two young children no longer breathe air thick with smoke. She did not switch for the climate. She switched because the stove became affordable.

Nearly a billion Africans still cook over charcoal or firewood every day. The International Energy Agency estimates that the smoke from these fuels kills roughly 850,000 people annually across the continent—a toll that rivals many named diseases but rarely makes headlines. The problem is not ignorance. It is cost. A decent clean stove once retailed for about $40, a sum beyond reach for most low-income households. Carbon credit financing changed that equation. An efficient biomass stove now costs customers as little as $5 after subsidies. Induction cookers are financed through carbon credits and pay-as-you-go plans that spread payments over months. The mechanism is straightforward: investors provide upfront capital to subsidize the retail price. In return, they receive revenue from carbon credits generated as households reduce their consumption of charcoal, wood, and other polluting fuels.

The shift is accelerating. In June, Africa secured $900 million in new financial commitments toward clean cooking technologies. More than 30 governments representing about 80 percent of Africans still without access to clean cooking have introduced 121 new policies since the Paris climate summit in 2015. Last year, 30 governments adopted the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Clean Cooking, a signal that the continent is treating this not as a luxury but as a necessity affecting every household. BURN, a Nairobi-based company, has distributed more than 7.3 million cookstoves across 11 African countries. Its founder and CEO, Peter Scott, argues that carbon project finance is the only mechanism that will allow clean cooking to scale. "Without that financing, many families cannot afford to switch," he said. The innovation, he emphasized, is not the stove itself but the financing architecture behind it.

Yet the carbon credit market remains under scrutiny. Critics worry that the industry's credibility is uneven, and that over-reliance on carbon finance could slow the transition rather than accelerate it. The sector has adopted stricter standards and more sophisticated emissions measurement—Bluetooth monitoring, digital verification, real-time usage data—to address longstanding concerns about carbon credit integrity. But setbacks have occurred. Koko Networks, a Kenyan clean cooking firm once celebrated as a model for Africa's green transition, closed in February after failing to secure government authorization to sell carbon credits.

George Mwaniki, head of Air Quality for WRI Africa, points to a structural problem: carbon finance typically arrives after the investment required to manufacture and distribute equipment. Companies need capital upfront to build stoves and get them into homes before they can generate the emissions reductions that produce carbon credits. "Carbon financing is more of a second financing source," he said. "If we depend wholly on carbon credits to support the transition, it will be extremely slow and will not happen at the pace that we need it to." The implication is clear: carbon credits are a tool, not a solution.

Companies are adapting their approaches to local conditions. BURN emphasizes electric cooking in Kenya and Tanzania, while biomass stoves gain traction in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar. Eco Safi operates forced-draft pellet stoves in Uganda, Kenya, and Malawi, using fuel made from agricultural waste. In Rwanda, BioMassters manufactures smokeless, solar-powered pellet stoves, while ENEDOM produces agricultural-residue briquettes in Kigali. The diversity of approaches reflects a continent learning what works where.

For Kavutha and millions like her, the calculus is simple. Her kitchen is cleaner. Her children are safer. She spends less money. These are not abstract climate benefits. They are the texture of daily life—the absence of smoke, the faster meal preparation, the smaller hole in the household budget. Whether carbon credits remain the financial engine driving this transition, or whether governments and investors develop alternative mechanisms, the momentum is real. A billion people still cook over open flames. The question is no longer whether they will switch, but how quickly the world can make the switch affordable.