From Cookstoves to Carbon Credits
- Pablo Carballo Chanfón
- vor 15 Stunden
- 6 Min. Lesezeit
An Insider's Perspective on the Kranti Clean Cooking Project in India
A Blog by Pablo Carballo Chanfón, Project Manager at First Climate
First Climate has developed a domestic energy efficiency project in rural India. The project, officially called "Kranti Clean Cooking in rural Madhya Pradesh, India", is already issuing Gold Standard-verified emission reductions that carry the Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM). This makes Kranti the first cookstove project in India to issue CCP-labeled carbon credits. In this blog, First Climate Carbon Project Manager Pablo Carballo Chanfón shares his perspective on the notable climate project he helped develop.
From Field Experience to Project Integrity
For those unfamiliar with the daily living conditions in an area like Madhya Pradesh, it’s probably hard to imagine what a difference improved cooking methods can make for those families. Seeing families cooking over traditional mud stoves makes the challenges they face each day tangible. From this viewpoint, emission reduction numbers are linked to a human context in daily life: time-consuming fuelwood collection, smoke-filled kitchens, and routines built around inefficient cooking methods just to name a few. Our Kranti project was designed to make a difference.
We developed Kranti in partnership with Kosher Climate and local experts, and the project supports the transition from traditional mud stoves, so-called chulhas, to more efficient, lower emission cookstoves. It is certified under Gold Standard and is among the first improved cookstove initiatives globally to issue CCP-labeled carbon credits.
Kranti aims to demonstrate how clean cooking projects can deliver both meaningful climate impact and high integrity.
Working on Kranti has reinforced for me that the credibility of a carbon project depends not only on the methodology applied, but also on how carefully the project is designed and implemented on the ground. One of the most important lessons I’ve taken from this project was the tremendous effort required to identify the appropriate beneficiaries and to build the most robust monitoring system possible that would reflect the actual use of technology in households.
Reaching the project’s 50,000 participating households required visiting nearly twice as many homes across more than a thousand villages. These households were carefully identified and had to meet the poverty line threshold before being invited to the project as beneficiaries. This extensive groundwork ultimately shaped both the project design and the monitoring system in place today.
Why "Clean Cooking" Matters
Traditional cooking methods are inefficient and contribute significantly to fuelwood consumption. This places pressure on local forests and leads to carbon emissions from non-renewable biomass. In many villages, collecting firewood remains part of the daily routine, often requiring long walks and hours of work. Seeing this reality first-hand, particularly the local women and children who are most affected, gives a different perspective to the emission reduction numbers generated by the project.
By reducing fuelwood demand, our Kranti project delivers significant emission reductions while simultaneously improving indoor air quality, reducing collection time, and supporting local employment. For me, this combination of climate impact and everyday benefits is what makes clean cooking such a powerful climate solution.
Every meal cooked on a cleaner stove becomes a small climate friendly action – repeated day after day.
Monitoring Impact at Household Level
The Gold Standard methodology we use places strong emphasis on monitoring and documentation. Our teams conducted in-person visits to participating households to ensure the highest possible data quality. During these visits, the teams not only collect monitoring data, but also speak with families, observe how the stoves are used, and support households in using them effectively.
All collected information is then documented through a monitoring system that allows data to be tracked down to the level of individual stoves via a dedicated dashboard. These systems and safeguards are part of the project’s certification under Gold Standard, which aligns with the CCP assessment framework. For our team, achieving the CCP label confirmed that this strong focus on monitoring and transparency was the right approach.
The Rationale: Why Clean Cooking?
Traditional cooking practices are deeply embedded in daily routines and cultural habits. That means any transition must be practical and locally accepted. This is why our local partners worked closely with communities to demonstrate the benefits of cleaner cooking solutions. Rather than simply distributing cookstoves, the project focused on showing families a healthier and more efficient way to cook.
A Clean Cooking Initiative with High Integrity Impact
Kranti is more than a cookstove distribution project. It demonstrates how large-scale climate solutions can deliver measurable emission reductions while also improving everyday life in rural communities. For me, the project illustrates how careful beneficiary selection, close engagement with communities, and robust monitoring can strengthen the environmental integrity that the carbon market increasingly demands.
Interview
To take a closer look at the story behind this carbon project, our editorial team had a chance to speak with Pablo Carballo hanfón, the blog author and one of the project developers of the Kranti project. In the short interview below, Pablo shares some further insights.
1. How does the project deliver impact beyond carbon?
The co-benefits of the Kranti project are fundamental outcomes of the technology shift. By burning fuel more efficiently, these stoves significantly reduce indoor air pollution, lowering respiratory health risks for families. When speaking with families, improved air quality is often the first benefit they mention.
2. Why does CCP alignment matter for buyers?
We see a growing trend that quality matters more and more in the market. A CCP label demonstrates that a project adheres to strict governance requirements and conservative quantification approaches. In an increasingly regulated and scrutinized market environment, holding CCP-labeled credits can give companies greater confidence when implementing their climate strategies by supporting climate projects.
Picture 1: Kranti project participant receives an improved cookstove; Pictures 2-4: Various scenes at a nightime improved cookstove monitoring visit. Cookstoves help reduce stress on local forests and cook more efficiently.
3. From your personal perspective, what’s unique about this project?
What stands out to me most is the enormous effort that went into identifying the 50,000 households eligible to participate in the project. To carry out this process, our teams conducted in-person visits to around 90,000 households and eventually distributed 50,000 improved cookstoves across 1,435 rural villages throughout the state of Madhya Pradesh. The entire beneficiary identification process took around a year and was essential to ensure the project reaches the right beneficiaries and generates meaningful impact.
To guide the selection process, we defined several criteria. For example, the forest coverage in a selected region had to be at least 30 percent of the total area to ensure that real fuelwood savings would be possible. We also focused on regions, called panchayats, with between 200 and 1,000 households, which allowed our teams to target rural communities without working in extremely small or isolated settlements.
Also, highly flood-prone areas were excluded to reduce the risk that households might relocate, which would make long-term monitoring difficult. Housing type was also considered as a proxy indicator for households close to the poverty line and with limited LPG usage. Finally, areas affected by rural or tribal conflicts were excluded to ensure that monitoring activities could take place in the future.
In the end, these extensive efforts proved well worth our collective investment, because they helped make sure that the project reached the intended beneficiaries while also enabling reliable monitoring of stove usage and overall project impact.
Picture 1 (above): Pablo looks on during a cookstove inspection; Pictures 2-4: additional impressions from site visits and daily life of beneficiaries of the Kranti Clean Cooking project.
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About the Author
Pablo Carballo Chanfón is a Senior Project Manager, Int. Compliance & Community/ RE working for First Climate (Switzerland) since 2020. He specializes in carbon finance with a focus on community-based (cookstoves and safe water) and Article 6 projects. He holds a B.A. in Economics with a minor in Global Sustainability from the University of California, Irvine, and an M.Sc. in Climate Science with a specialization in economics from the University of Bern. As the team lead for the Kranti project, Pablo combines technical and economic expertise to advance high-integrity climate solutions.
