Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism gets off to a bad start with a Clean Development Mechanism cookstoves project in Myanmar
The first of many junk credits under Article 6.4.
The Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism has approved its first project. It’s a cookstove project in Myanmar. Trellis reports that, “The inaugural project is seen by many as flawed, and its inclusion highlights a challenge to the mechanism’s integrity goals.”
Not a good start.
The project distributes fuelwood burning improved cookstoves. The idea behind improved cookstoves as carbon projects is that they stoves are more efficient and therefore less wood is needed. Less wood means less deforestation and lower emissions.
Dodgy baseline
The problem with the Myanmar cookstoves project is a problem common to many cookstove projects: the overestimation of the fraction of non-renewable biomass. This is the fraction of the wood collected as fuel wood that results in deforestation.
The reality is that some of the wood collected will actually grow back.
Obviously, project developers have an incentive to exaggerate the amount of deforestation, and minimise how much wood was collected sustainably. Project developers can sell more carbon credits if they assume that the baseline scenario (the counterfactual story about what would happen in the absence of the project) is devastating for forests in the area of the project.
A paper published in Nature Sustainability in January 2024 describes the CDM fraction of non-renewable biomass values as “inaccurate”. The paper found clear evidence of massive over-crediting by cookstove project developers.
Barbara Haya of University of California Berkeley is one of the co-authors of the paper. She told the Financial Times that the credits from cookstove projects were “being used to justify ongoing emissions, sell carbon neutral products and convince consumers they can continue consuming, driving and flying without impacting the planet, which is simply not true”.
Junk credits
The Myanmar cookstoves project was developed as a Clean Development Mechanism project called “Clean Energy Program Supported by Republic of Korea”. The project is run by a South Korean company called ECOEYE Co.
The CDM methodology, AMS-II.G, was recently rejected by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market as not meeting the Core Carbon Principles. The reason given was that the methodology is “insufficiently rigorous in how fuel consumption and ongoing technology usage are measured”.
The carbon credit rating agency Calyx Global in Tier 3 — the lowest category. This indicates “significant risks to GHG integrity”, Calyx Global notes on its website.
These are junk credits, in other words.
The problem arose because China and India lobbied for CDM projects to be included under Article 6.4, the carbon trading mechanism of the Paris Agreement. A compromise was reached, allowing CDM projects a “transition window” that runs until the end of 2025. At that point, new rules will be introduced.
Lambert Schneider, at the Oeko-Institut in Germany, told Trellis that, “I’m very confident that such a project wouldn’t pass the new rules,” referring to the Myanmar cookstove project.
Unfortunately, the Myanmar cookstoves project is just the first dodgy CDM project that could soon be traded under Article 6. More than 1,000 CDM projects have applied to be included in the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism. More than 600 of these projects are in India.
Nowhere in the history of the world has "collected wood" ever grown back. Those stoves are absolutely not efficient burners of wood. They do nothing to reduce exposure to combustion byproducts, not only that, but as a result of their poor design, contribute more air pollution. See the soot on the tile behind the stove? Do you like cooking on the floor? Does this stove help you think your flight isn't impacting the planet?