UN opens comment period on clean cooking carbon methodology

The Methodological Expert Panel of the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism has released its draft mechanism methodology for clean cooking for public comment, opening a three-week consultation window on the framework that project developers have been waiting on since transition rules took effect at the start of the year.

This is an update to the methodology backlog covered earlier in this chat. What is new is that the panel has now agreed the draft text and moved it into formal public consultation, alongside a draft methodological tool covering grid emission factors. Previously the clean cooking work had been circulating between panel meetings without a settled draft.

The draft, catalogued by the secretariat as A6.4-MEP013-A02, derives from the Comprehensive Lowered Emission Assessment and Reporting methodology, referred to in UNFCCC documentation as A6.4-PMM004 and known in the sector as CLEAR. That framework was developed by the Clean Cooking and Climate Consortium, a sector-wide effort led by the Clean Cooking Alliance and running since 2022. The consortium released a draft for public comment in July 2024, drawing 40 submissions containing close to 700 individual comments over a six-week period, then revised it in response and submitted successive versions to Gold Standard and Verra before submitting an Article 6.4-compliant version to the UNFCCC in May 2025.

The draft sets efficiency thresholds to distinguish improved cookstoves from baseline devices, specifying 16.6% for fuelwood and 23.6% for charcoal, figures the documentation states are drawn from empirical evidence and peer-reviewed research. It also establishes criteria for what qualifies as a user household, structured so that emission reductions are not quantified from households that fail to meet those criteria. On permanence, the draft provides that where reversal risks apply, the relevant emission reductions are immediately cancelled, an approach the text argues avoids moral hazard because activity participants neither control the carbon reservoirs concerned nor have any incentive to increase reversal risk, their interests instead being aligned toward reducing biomass consumption.

The draft methodology remains dependent on methodological tools that are themselves still under development and not yet approved by the Supervisory Body, and the text notes it will be revised if those tools change before adoption. The entry-into-force date is left unfilled in the current version.

Stakeholders wishing to comment must use form A6.4-FORM-METH-007 and submit by email to the mechanism’s methodologies address. The panel develops methodologies either on its own initiative or from third-party submissions, with final approval resting with the Supervisory Body.

The stakes for the sector are substantial. More than 2,000 projects registered under the Kyoto-era Clean Development Mechanism have applied to transition into the Paris mechanism, and since the start of this year they have required newly approved methodologies before they can issue credits. Clean cooking accounts for a large share of that transitioning cohort, particularly among African project developers, and the absence of an approved methodology has been the principal bottleneck. Secretariat figures reported earlier this year showed 39 bottom-up methodology submissions received, of which seven passed initial screening, against a stated expectation of six to seven approvals by year-end covering an estimated 60% to 70% of activities seeking transition.

The methodology also carries weight beyond the UN mechanism. CLEAR has been under parallel review by Gold Standard and Verra, and alignment across those bodies would reduce the administrative burden on developers currently navigating divergent cookstove protocols. Cookstove crediting has faced sustained academic and civil society criticism over systematic over-crediting, with campaign group Carbon Market Watch having argued during the earlier consultation that CLEAR represents progress but retains shortcomings that risk perpetuating the problem unless the panel opts for more conservative estimations where the science is uncertain.

The first credits issued under the Paris mechanism, approved in February for a Myanmar cookstove project, came in roughly 40% below what the predecessor CDM methodology would have produced. The Supervisory Body meets again in Bonn from 5 to 9 October, its final session before COP31.