Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting

Abstract

An estimated 2.6 billion people rely on traditional biomass for home cooking and heating, so improving the efficiency of household cookstoves could provide significant environmental, social and economic benefits. Some researchers have estimated that potential greenhouse gas emission reductions could exceed 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year. Carbon finance offers a policy mechanism for realizing some of this potential and could also bring improved monitoring to cookstove projects. However, there are formidable methodological challenges in estimating emission reductions. This paper evaluates the quantification approaches to three key variables in calculating emission impacts: biomass fuel consumption, fraction of non-renewable biomass, and emission factors for fuel consumption. It draws on a literature review as well as on interviews with technical experts and market actors, and identifies lessons learned and knowledge gaps. Key research needs identified include incorporating accounting for uncertainty; development of additional default factors for biomass consumption for baseline stoves; refinement of monitoring approaches for cookstove use; broadened scope of emission factors used for cookstoves; accounting for non-CO2 gases and black carbon; and refinement of estimates and approaches to considering emissions from bioenergy use across methodologies.

The hidden role of woody debris stocks as a woodfuel source: why cutting down trees if woodfuel can be gathered from forest floor?

“…The use of woody biomass as woodfuel increases greenhouse gases emissions (mainly CO 2 ) if the amount collected surpasses regrowth in such an area. The difference between both of them is known as the fraction of non-renewable biomass, which has been put in question because of uncertainty related to variability in the results reached when different methodological approaches are run (Lee et al 2013).…”

“…A short review of literature about this topic shows at least two quantitative procedures for calculating the fraction of non-renewable biomass (Lee et al 2013). They agree on using aboveground biomass stocks and their productivity as parameters to allow determining the nonrenewable biomass, nonetheless excluding woody debris stocks as additional factor might alter the fraction of non-renewable biomass calculations.…”

Energy Poverty in Context of Climate Change: What Are the Possible Impacts of Improved Modern Energy Access on Adaptation Capacity of Communities?

“…In relation to this, growing interest is revolving around how cook stove projects should be more integrated into global carbon markets, since the marginal abatement cost is generally low and due to direct positive impacts on households, the projects are easily considered as environmentally and socially sustainable. One of main issues concerning increased integration of these projects is the lack of uniform methodologies to quantify climate benefits from improved cook stoves [18]. For the Kyoto greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as CO 2 , CH 4 standardized quantifiable methodologies exist [19], [20] and a study conducted in Mexican community shows that with improved cook stoves, CO 2 -equivalent savings for CO 2 , CH 4 , CO and non-methane hydrocarbons were 3.9 tCO 2 -e/year per household, while for Kyoto GHGs, 3.1 tCO2-e/year per household [21].…”

Validación y evaluación comparativa de la eficiencia de una estufa de leña mejorada bajo condiciones controladas y prueba de campo

“…Lo anterior parece ratificar una afirmación ampliamente extendida en el ámbito de la evaluación de la eficiencia de los sistemas de cocción: no existe correlación entre la eficiencia lograda bajo condiciones controladas y aquella que puede ser medida bajo condiciones reales de campo con el KPT (Lee et al, 2013;Bailis et al, 2007). Notablemente, se observa una mayor afinidad entre la diferencia detectada para el consumo especifico de combustible con el CCT y la diferencia entre consumos de leña derivada del KPT (13,4% y 11,6%, respectivamente).…”