Buyer's Guide to High-Quality Cookstove Carbon Credits

The Buyer’s Guide to High-Quality Carbon Credits was officially launched last week at the New York Stock Exchange, and offers a powerful opportunity for companies and individuals to understand and convert their carbon emissions liabilities into meaningful impact for communities that are in desperate need as a result of climate change.

This guide was developed by several important players in the cooking and carbon sectors, to help businesses find the highest integrity and highest impact projects to support, as they take responsibility for their on-going climate impact, or those who need reassurances for the type of carbon credits they buy as they offset their carbon footprint as part of their net zero goal strategies. “The Buyer’s Guide provides a practical roadmap for companies and investors seeking to purchase carbon credits that meet the highest standards of environmental integrity and social responsibility” stated the Clean Cooking Alliance during the launch.

Simoshi is very proud to have been featured in this guide (page 28) as an exemplary project model, that has been delivering high quality and impact to the local communities for the past nine years, through its registered Project Activity “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda” with the Gold Standard.

Saucepans Leaking

For the past nine years we have learned an incredible amount of information from the school kitchens. And it never stops. Continuously we adjust our monitoring exercises, and the specific indicators we monitor, because as the years go by, and the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) age, a wealth of knowledge comes with it. Although they might look as “problems” at a first glance, they are opportunities to adjust our training guides to become even better.

Physically testing each saucepan in the kitchen is now essential. In the past, we would interview the cooks about any water being seen inside the IICS (either from broken saucepans or damaged building roofs). Cooks could overview such problems, or they could complain to the school officials without having any response to fixing such issues.

This year we have implemented a thorough filing and follow up of such issues identified by Simoshi’s Project Officers, to ensure the problems are resolved by giving Head Teachers a deadline for resolution. Subsequently future IICS corrosion will avoided saving in expensive maintenance costs.

High Integrity Matters

Supporting sustainable development around the world, particularly in countries that are the poorest and most vulnerable to climate change is crucial as leaders, businesses, and civil society take action on transparent and equitable climate action.

Schools in Uganda struggle with their kitchens and over 22,000 of them are still cooking today with 3-stone fires.

For those that choose to offset their residual emissions, always remember research shows that the global use of carbon markets – as long as they are high-integrity – could allow the world to nearly double climate ambition relative to current Paris pledges over 2020-2035, all without increasing total costs. By unlocking additional finance that would not otherwise be available, Simoshi can provide crucial support to schools, build resilience, and drive positive sustainable development outcomes for a full decade as it handholds over 120 schools in their cooking transitions.

In Memory of Francis

Last week we visited Tropical High School, a school that joined our Project Activity last year. This was our first visit since the school reopened its doors for the first school term.

We are always excited to meet our friends once again as we go back to the usual training routine on how to best operate the institutional improved cook stoves.

Unfortunately this time we got to learn the bad news that the cook Francis Muhawenimana did not survive a theft attack in the late hours at a nearby road. Our thoughts are with his wife and three children he leaves behind. He will be dearly missed.

The School Year Is On

Schools officially started yesterday! The school calendar year 2025 is on. The streets of Kampala went back to the usuals buzz, traffic jam and early commuters getting children to their classrooms.

From our side, we have managed to get all the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) repaired on time, so kitchens are back fully operational with their appliances in good shape.

It is now the time to continue reinforcing the training of all cooks and kitchen staff, to ensure they achieve the most firewood savings, reduce on the smoke, and work in a clean and safe kitchen environment.

At the same time, we also monitor the condition of the IICS, to take quick action in case an urgent repair is needed, that cannot wait until the next holiday period.

Performance Review no. 6

Today we have finished with our sixth verification field visit, where 14 schools were randomly sampled by the verification body 4K Science Private Limited.

The monitoring period included 115 schools that were supported under the Project Activity from 01/01/2024 and until 31/12/2024.

Throughout the 3 past days, we had great feedback from all cooks interviewed, and were pleased to find all kitchens fully transitioned to the institutional improved cook stoves achieving at least half firewood savings, when compared to their former 3 stone fires.

Below are some pictures from the Local Expert in the field, collecting data, checking on the stoves used and their corresponding serial numbers, training records, and more!

No Supervision On Holidays

We have been writing quite a lot throughout this month of January about the problems encountered in the school kitchens, as these should be, in theory, closed, due to holidays. Nevertheless, many of the kitchens are still operational, even if no students are attending classes. Several school staff live within the school premises, and they have access to the kitchen, so they are using the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) to cook their personal meals on a daily basis.

And this is when problems start. No supervision is around from the school offices or management, and when a solution is needed, help can not be provided. The picture below was taken at a secondary school in Kisaasi, that has 7 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) since 2023. When visiting them today for the free IICS maintenance, we found one of the cooks using a 3-stone fire inside the same kitchen building. She explained that her saucepans had started leaking, so nobody was in the administration block to help her with the money needed for the repairs.

It is a real pity to see her struggling with the smoke. Common sources of air pollution in Uganda include the use of solid fuels in homes like wood, charcoal and dried animal dung. This mixture of air pollution can generate a range of air pollutants which can affect her health in different ways, especially cardiovascular diseases.

Unfortunately, estimates of levels of air pollution show “they are high in Africa and getting worse, especially in urban areas. Levels of air pollution are, on average, three times higher than those observed in high-income regions such as Europe. Overall, 60% of African countries experienced an increase in airborne pollution particles between 2010 and 2019”.

Holidays Bring Problems

During holidays, most schools continue to use the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) for the staff that live within the school premises.

This is very unfortunate, because despite our continuous training to the cooks, they mistakenly use the wrong IICS saucepan sizes. Because they cook for fewer people, they use small containers in bigger stove diameters.

This mistake creates an accelerated damage to the combustion chamber, corrosion to the stove inner jacket, and excessive and unnecessary unhealthy smoke inside the kitchen building.

The video below was taken earlier this week at one of the participating schools under our Project Activity, and shows exactly what we are describing.

Candidates Are Back

Although the official start date for the school year is Monday 3rd of February, many schools have decided to get their P7 candidates earlier in class throughout January. Head Teachers agreed with parents to give extra learning support for one month as they will be facing challenging exams to pass to secondary education.

It is a bit of a disappointment to us, because January is a month we use to repair the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) for free to all schools. You can see in the video below cooks are already lighting the IICS to prepare the lunch for the P7 candidates. We will have to stretch during the coming weekends to see how we can get the maintenance done, before all the children are back in class next month.

Welcoming 2025

December has disappeared in the blink of an eye, we have been very busy repairing the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) and that made time fly! All schools are closed for the festive season and we cannot miss out on the opportunity to do the free IICS maintenance as cooks are home enjoying their well deserved holiday. And kitchens are free for us to get them operating at their highest efficiency.

Tomorrow Monday 6th January some schools will be opening their doors for the first term of the year. Nevertheless, the government calendar for Term 1 has a later date at the beginning of February for the official start date for government aided schools. Some private schools tend to have their own special timetable, which might also differ on the closing term dates. All secondary school candidates usually start earlier too, to intensify their education curriculum.

This means the month of January becomes tight for IICS repairs. That is why we push during December to get as many schools as possible within the maintenance rota.

The Kitchen Assessment Evolves

Time can only make things “almost perfect”. Despite having monitored school kitchens for the past 9 years, we are continuously learning and improving the monitoring techniques, that will eventually transform school kitchens in efficient and clean cooking environments.

Our “Kitchen Training Assessment” is performed at least 6 times per year, preferably every other month, in each participating school under our Project Activity. This assessment confirms whether the cooks are following the “Kitchen Training Manual” which helps them effectively operate their institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) and achieve the highest hygiene standards in the kitchen.

Twelve indicators are collected, to confirm whether the requirements are achieved, or whether further action is needed to change old habits. These include the size of the firewood used, the capacity of the saucepan filled, the usage of a saucepan cover, the cleaning of soot and ash, the firewood storage, the condition of saucepans to ensure no leakages are taking place. We have now included the method used for serving food, as this can have a decisive impact in the long term durability of the IICS. We ave learned that schools that use buckets to remove the food and thereafter serve individually on each plate, have a positive impact on delaying potential metal corrosion of the IICS top ring.

We have also included an indicator that notes whether a cook has been replaced, to ensure dedicated training is implemented by Simoshi’s Project Officers and more time is spent with the new kitchen staff.

Closing The School Year

This academic year is now coming to an end. Government aided schools have closed their doors on Friday 6th of December. Children have been very busy throughout November sitting for their final exams. This coming week of December children will collect their grade reports, and say goodbye to their teachers and friends until February 2025, when the academic year starts once again.

Throughout 2024, we have been proudly supporting 115 primary and secondary schools in their kitchens, ensuring cooking happens efficiently every single day, so schools can save at least 50% of their firewood expenditures, children can have their meals served on time, cooks can enjoy a smoke free and safe environment, and ultimately, that a clean kitchen environment is achieved.

This means that throughout our monthly visits and monitoring activities, we have positively impacted the lives of over 104,000 individuals (children, cooks, school staff) who have witnessed the transformation in the kitchen and food halls, and that such change can be sustained throughout time as we make 8 years since we have been walking together hand in hand, ensuring the institutional improved stoves continue to perform at their highest level, through the free annual maintenance provided to all.

104,000+

The number of children, cooks, teachers and school staff positively impacted throughout 2024.

Girl & Women Power

As we wrap up a busy 2024, we are compiling many indicators collected for Simoshi’s Project Activity monitoring report, concerning the 115 schools that were supported in their kitchens and their cooking practices during these 365 days.

In this post we write exclusively about SDG 5 Gender Equality. Women are fully represented throughout the project, both at the beneficiary school level, and at Simoshi. This year, 140 women were continuously trained in the school kitchens, collecting their feedback on the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) performance and /or maintenance required, collecting information on their perception of the air quality, and sharing ideas of what we are endlessly learning, as we will soon make 9 years in this journey together.

Women power means ladies can also get the job done, and we thought of also sharing the picture of our founder Virginia Echavarria, getting some metal sheets cut for some IICS that got corroded and need welding this week!

Firewood Degradation

95% of schools in Uganda still use firewood for all of their cooking activities, as per the latest figures released by the Uganda Bureau of Standards.

The sources from that firewood is still a debate. Uganda’s over-reliance on traditional biomass for cooking is a tragic indicator that the country is trapped in environmental degradation. According to the National Environment Management Authority, every year 2,6% of local forests are cut down for firewood, charcoal, agricultural use and to make way for the rapid population growth.

Schools are massive contributors to such alarming figures, taking into account there are 22,000 schools in the country and an average of 240 kilograms of firewood is consumed per person per year.

With the introduction of the energy efficient institutional improved cook stoves, a minimum of 50% firewood savings are achieved when transitioning from the traditional cooking practices of 3-stone fire places. These savings can also be increased when schools are introduced to behavior changes of firewood storage, which again can increase savings a further 20%, managing firewood purchases and storage efficiently to achieve the maximum energy content.

Human Resilience

Working conditions are both the physical and the psychological conditions that workers are exposed to while performing a job. When we talk about conditions, we refer to everything in and around that working environment the employee is exposed to. They can also significantly impact the employee’s health and safety, mental wellbeing and productivity.

It never stops to amaze us the poor working environment that cooks are exposed to in the traditional school kitchens. Using traditional cook stoves means that the smoke generated from poor firewood combustion is equivalent to smoking two packages of cigarettes per day.

Employees always lack protective gear, and are prone to getting burnt from the dangerous fire flames raging from all sides.

Ashes and soot are floating around, the heat is unbearable and the pressure to get the food on time only makes such work more stressful.

This job is badly remunerated, the average salary is currently USD 50.00 per month, Monday to Saturday.

The pictures below are the sad representation of what 90% of kitchens in Uganda look like. Turning such miserable conditions need effort and dedication, and we are committed to making the work place a dignified environment as many individuals and organizations continue to push towards achieving their sustainability goals through the purchase of carbon credits.

New Month New School

We welcome St. Gyaviira Primary School to our Gold Standard registered project activity “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda”. We have managed to donate 2 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) to this school that currently cooks for 800 students.

The video here below was taken last Sunday, as the school has got a small boarding population. They currently use the traditional 3-stone fires to prepare the daily meals. With their new IICS, the school will be able to save almost USD 900 on annual firewood purchases. That is a lot of money for a government aided school, where schools fees collected from parents are really minimal and the support from government is also restricted. Stay tuned as we will soon post the pictures of their new kitchen!

Closing October With St. Lino

As the month end, we welcome St. Lino Junior School to our Project Activity. Yesterday we delivered 3 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) to cater for all cooking needs for their 500 children population.

This school has managed to benefit from a 40% discount on the IICS cost thanks to the support provided by SNV. For us, we do not charge any mark-up on the costs, on the contrary, we are always looking for grants to make sure we can help schools further as they move away from traditional cooking practices. The prices we are charged from the IICS manufacturer, Ugastove, are the exact same prices we charge the schools joining, and whenever possible, we look for funds to have them discounted.

St. Lino is currently finalising the construction of their new kitchen building. In the meantime, we have placed all 3 new IICS inside without having the chimneys installed, as we await for the builders to give the finishing touches. We are sharing here below the current kitchen the school has been using for the past ten years, a typical basic construction with metal sheets, no doors nor windows, no flooring, and traditional cooking stoves.

Focus Should Be On People

The cooking sector, especially donors and financing bodies, currently put the focus on the lifetime of the improved cook stove (ICS), which can vary somewhere between 3 to 5 years for the household models, when supporting the scale-up of efficient and clean cooking activities.

But this approach is wrong. The focus should be put on the people using that new technology, instead of worrying on how many sales can be achieved, or if the product includes a warranty. The objective is to make sure that user or household is being supported throughout their lifetime as they successfully make the cooking transition and move up the energy ladder. Projects should be there to support users to ensure they do not go back to old traditional cooking methods, to provide advice if new cooking technologies arise and can continue to upgrade to more beneficial cooking appliances. Projects should be there to monitor the user’s usage rate, stacking habits, and provide support to any repairs and maintenance needed.

We know the aim is to provide with modern, affordable and cleaner cooking solutions to many individuals still cooking today like in the Stone Age. Intentions are good, but the design is short sighted. Let us focus on the lifetime of our beneficiaries, instead of focusing on the lifetime of the technology. Then we would have succeeded in having a long-lasting impact in the lives of those left behind.

The True Meaning Of Local Impact

So much to discuss about cookstove projects linked to carbon finance, and why it is important to buy carbon credits from projects that have a local and in-country focus to everything they do in their activities.

When we talk about local impact, we refer to money that circulates locally, therefore wealth is distributed more equally.

At Simoshi, we have designed our Gold Standard registered Project Activity to help Ugandan schools move away from traditional cooking practices, by designing a system of governance that is responsive to the schools’ needs, that can deliver high sustainable development outcomes to all those communities involved around the school activities, and that can increase job generation by locally outsourcing all the products and services needed to run the carbon project, whenever available.

For example, the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) are locally manufactured by Uganda Stove Manufacturers Limited (Ugastove). The IT Kenga infrastructure used for all monitoring, reporting and verification activities is designed by the local software developer OmniTech. All carbon asset development, accounting, financial, and legal services are provided by Ugandan companies run by Ugandan professionals.

It is Simoshi’s pride to state that all taxes are paid locally as we are a company 100% fully registered in Uganda, with no other subsidiaries abroad, a company that supports domestic revenue generation. This approach in the carbon financing sector is generally lacking in developing countries, and we believe such assessment of a carbon credits’ local impact should also be included under the high integrity carbon categorisation.

It is still not clear how the majority of carbon project developers, intermediaries, and rating agencies are currently disclosing and/or assessing the flow and the impact of those revenues accrued from the sale of the carbon credits and how these are reflected in the local economies. We believe this is a subject that needs attention and discussions as we continue to pursue towards a more transparent sector.

Mixed Kitchen Style

Last school term of the year - term III - has commenced, and children are busy getting ready for their final exams that will take place next month by the end of November.

We have had several calls from various schools that requested Simoshi’s services, and we have visited some of their kitchens to measure the saucepan capacities in use and be able to prepare a quotation with the cost for replacing all with new institutional improved cook stoves (IICS).

It usually surprises us in a sad way, that many of these new schools are using a combination of 3-stone fires, together with stove constructions that have the look and feel of “improved”, but actually perform very poorly and consume a lot of firewood just as any other traditional appliance. The picture here below depicts the typical scenario of what we call a traditional kitchen, with poor ventilation, full of smoke, soot and ash flying in the air, and poor hygiene as a result inefficient firewood combustion.

At the moment we have placed the IICS order of different saucepan capacities for three new schools, and we will be sharing the pictures of their new kitchen environments very shortly.