Why High-Integrity Cookstove Projects Need Higher Carbon Credit Prices

A new report from UK-based platform Abatable warns that clean cookstove projects offering strong climate and social benefits are financially unviable under current carbon market conditions—unless buyers are willing to pay more.

A close-up shot of an African woman preparing food with an energy-efficient cookstove. AI generated picture.

The study finds that carbon credits generated by projects using the most advanced stoves and rigorous methodologies require a minimum floor price of $15.30 to $38.90 per tonne of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e) to break even. That’s far above what most buyers currently pay.

‘Our model finds a significant disconnect between the median spot price for cookstove projects and the spot price we would expect to see for a high-impact project,’ Abatable noted in its research.

The pricing gap reflects several cost pressures. Projects built around modern technologies, such as metered stoves using biomass pellets or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), must follow strict carbon accounting and monitoring standards. These increase expenses and reduce the number of credits that can be issued, especially compared to projects using older, more lenient methodologies.

Abatable’s analysis compared five cookstove scenarios, factoring in different methodologies, stove types, monitoring strategies, and alignment with integrity frameworks like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM). The report emphasises that older baselines—like Verra’s VMR0006, often criticised for enabling over-crediting—don’t hold up against newer initiatives such as the Clean Cooking Alliance’s ‘CLEAR’ framework.

Despite some premium projects fetching up to $35/tCO₂e, those cases are rare and generally operate on a small scale. The broader market, Abatable says, is still stuck on outdated benchmarks that don’t reflect the true cost of delivering measurable emissions reductions.

‘To drive real climate impact, carbon credit buyers must move beyond outdated price benchmarks and recognise the actual costs of delivering high-integrity avoidance credits,’ the report stated.

While technology costs are expected to decrease as scale improves, Abatable underlines the urgency of buyer support and early-stage investment to sustain the transition.

‘Ultimately, buyers should be prepared to pay more for high-integrity credits, and rightly so — they're a better product and prices should reflect real tonnes of CO₂ and additional co-benefits,’ the report concluded.