By
Carbon Portfolio Manager
Edited: 19 Sept 2025
10 min read
UK businesses seeking high-quality cookstove carbon credits need projects with verified impact. BURN’s Kenya cookstove carbon credit project delivers 144,000 tonnes CO2e avoided annually through a Gold Standard certified methodology. This project review examines the carbon credit quality, monitoring technology, and investment case for sustainability leaders.
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Access to clean cooking remains one of Kenya’s most urgent development challenges. The National Cooking Sector Study (2019) found that 93.2% of rural households still rely on solid fuels, placing pressure on forests and exposing families to Household Air Pollution (HAP), one of Kenya’s leading health risks (MoE, 2019).
The government has committed to scaling efficient cooking solutions, targeting an abatement potential of 7.3 MtCO₂e by 2030 and restoring forest cover from 7% to 10% (MoE, 2019). Expanding clean cooking access is also expected to reduce HAP-related disease cases by more than half, from 49% (21,560 annually) to 20% (MoE, 2019).
BURN, founded in 2010, leads this transition with Kenya’s first modern cookstove factory – still the only vertically integrated facility in sub-Saharan Africa. Powered by solar, it produces up to 400,000 stoves per month and employs 2,500 people, half women. By combining cleaner cooking with women’s economic empowerment, BURN shows how the energy transition can be both climate-positive and socially inclusive.
In May 2025, Ecologi visited BURN’s Nairobi headquarters for a routine project assessment and deeper insight into its operations.
Cookstove carbon credits: climate solution assessment
The Gold Standard Programme of Activity “BURN Stoves Project in Kenya” (GS ID 5642) focuses on distributing improved cookstoves, known as Ecoa (formerly Jikokoa), to households across all 47 counties of Kenya. The project is led locally by BURN through its carbon financing arm, ECOA Climate Capital. While BURN manufactures the stoves, ECOA Climate Capital ensures the effective financing and sale of carbon credits
By replacing inefficient traditional cooking methods, the project reduces charcoal and wood consumption, cuts household fuel costs, lowers carbon emissions, and improves health outcomes.
BURN’s Kenya cookstove carbon credits: project details | |
|---|---|
Verification | Gold Standard |
Annual Volume | 144,000+ tonnes CO2e avoided |
Geography | Kenya, East Africa |
Monitoring | Kitchen Performance Tests (KPTs) |
Co-benefits | Community development, gender impact |
ICVCM Status | CCP Approval due Q4 2025 |
BURN's Range of Cookstoves
While the flagship Ecoa is a charcoal-burning stove, BURN also produces highly efficient wood-burning stoves and fully-electric metered stoves.
The electric stoves are ideal for monitoring usage and ensuring maximum efficiency - because monitoring stove usage is as simple as metering the electricity used - but with limited grid access in many rural areas, wood and charcoal stoves remain essential. By offering a diverse product range, BURN supports households at different stages of the clean energy transition.
Different types of cookstoves (see image above) | ||
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Wood stoves | Charcoal stoves | Electric stoves |
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The company is committed to hiring 50% female staff in its factory, ensuring that women, who are disproportionately affected by energy poverty, are at the heart of the solution. Walking through the manufacturing plant, we saw women leading production lines, operating heavy machinery, and setting the standard for what equitable, sustainable employment looks like. The factory is impressively modern, with clear signage and strict safety protocols evident throughout the site.
The business case: cookstove carbon credits for UK companies
SDG Contributions and Impact
Supporting a project such as this will see your business contribute to meaningful and measurable impacts…
According to a recent Gold Standard monitoring report (Aug 2025), the project contributes to multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with measurable results:
SDG | Header 2 | Header 3 |
|---|---|---|
SDG 1: No Poverty | Household monetary savings | USD 95.11 per household/year |
SDG 3: Good Health & Well-being | Perceived indoor air quality | 99.05% households reporting improvement |
SDG 4: Quality Education | Skill development training | 77 people (39 males, 38 females) |
SDG 5: Gender Equality | Time saved cooking | 37 minutes per day |
SDG 7: Affordable & Clean Energy | Improved cookstoves in use | 190,190 stoves |
SDG 8: Decent Work & Economic Growth | Jobs created | 68 jobs (39 males, 29 females) |
SDG 13: Climate Action | GHG Emission Reductions | 37,667 tCO₂e VERs |
SDG 15: Life on Land | Non-renewable biomass saved | 27,693.35 tons |
To date, BURN has distributed over 5 million clean cookstoves across Africa, transforming the lives of ~25 million+ people and preventing ~26 million tons of CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere. (BURN, 2025)
BURN's efficient stoves have generated 9.5M Gold Standard credits, reduced indoor air pollution by 65-100%, and protected forests by saving over 16M tons of wood.
Real-time monitoring builds carbon credit trust
To give confidence to businesses funding cookstove projects, it’s important to verify that the claimed emissions avoided by the project are real, and traditionally, cookstove project developers have relied on household surveys to identify how the stoves are being used. These can be unreliable for a number of reasons, especially when they are the only monitoring technique used (see Hing & Gadgil, 2023). So when it comes to understanding how stoves are being used in the real world, collecting field data trumps making assumptions.
That’s why, instead of using default values or remote surveys, BURN conducts rigorous four-day, in-household Kitchen Performance Tests (KPTs) to measure how stoves are actually used in daily life. This approach provides an accurate picture of fuel savings and emissions reductions under real-world conditions.
In addition to its own monitoring, BURN’s impact is supported by independent, peer-reviewed studies that validate both the environmental and social benefits of its projects (Acumen, 2023; Berkouwer, 2022). By combining direct household data with third-party evidence, BURN ensures that the carbon credits issued from its work are both credible and transparent, delivering measurable climate impact while improving lives on the ground.
BURN manages every stage from product design and project creation to manufacturing, distribution, after-sales service, and carbon issuance. By managing the process end-to-end, BURN holds a unique vantage point that enables the company to implement and oversee high-integrity projects across the continent.
Product lifecycle: from manufacture to end user
The Ecologi team observed the full manufacturing process of BURN’s Ecoa cookstoves, beginning at the arrival of raw materials.
Every component, from the smallest pins that hold the structure together to the variously-shaped and sized metal parts, is produced on-site at BURN’s state-of-the-art solar-powered factory in Ruiru, Nairobi. The facility employs more than 2,500 people and houses advanced machinery for each stage of production. During the visit, Production Manager Godfrey Chege guided the team through the process, from laser cutting and moulding to final stove assembly, offering a detailed look into the precision and scale behind each Ecoa stove.
In Kenya, many households rely on a single salary to support anywhere from three to ten people, making the ripple effects of women’s employment especially significant. In conversation with Carbon Marketing Officer, Sera Kazungu, the team gained valuable insight into the impact of BURN’s commitment to hiring 50% women in its workforce. As she explained, “When you hire a woman, you empower her—and when you empower a woman, you empower her family.” In a society where economic opportunities are often dominated by men, BURN’s approach has a profound social impact, strengthening both families and communities.
The team then went from the warehouse out into the field and visited end users on the outskirts of Nairobi to understand, on a personal level, how the stoves were being used and the benefits they were delivering. It is important to assess projects on the ground, where you can gain the bigger picture directly from those whose lives are most affected. We met households using each of the three stove types, and every woman we spoke to shared how her stove had made life easier, healthier, and safer. From reduced smoke in the kitchen to lower spending on charcoal to hours saved each day, the impact was clear and deeply personal. While the numbers tell an impressive story of scale, it was in these kitchens - sharing conversations with women proud of their new stoves - that the true value of this project came alive.
BURN targets stove distribution to the families who need them most.
Before entering any new market, BURN conducts detailed feasibility studies and willingness-to-pay assessments to ensure its projects are truly additional. These assessments provide insight into local cooking practices, the fuels most commonly used, the types of stoves households already rely on, and the barriers that prevent families from adopting improved technologies. Based on this research, BURN designs carbon projects that make its high-quality stoves available to low-income families at a subsidised cost.
BURN’s field agents visit households before each sale to verify that they meet the company’s target criteria. This pre-screening process helps ensure high-integrity monitoring, as the “baseline” sample survey is directly comparable to the families who actually adopt the stoves.
Every BURN stove carries a unique serial number, allowing for accurate tracking and preventing double-counting. Alongside distribution, BURN runs ongoing user awareness campaigns across its markets to educate households about the health, economic, and environmental benefits of improved cookstoves—while also providing practical guidance on how to use them effectively.
Cookstoves and the ICVCM quality labels
In recent years, cookstove carbon projects have faced growing scrutiny. Criticisms of methodological assumptions, the reliability of household surveys, and the extent of real-world impacts on fuel use, deforestation, and health outcomes are not without merit, and these are rightly seen as limitations (Hing & Gadgil, 2023). However, the intervention remains worthwhile: methodologies are continuously being refined, mitigation measures such as improved monitoring are in place, and while electric stoves cannot yet be deployed at scale, efficient cookstoves still provide tangible climate and social benefits.
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) has responded to these challenges with the introduction of its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs). These provide a rigorous, science-based framework for what constitutes a high-integrity carbon credit, adding transparency and consistency at the market level. However, as the ICVCM two-tick system applies at the level of standards (e.g., Gold Standard) and methodologies (e.g., GS TPDDTEC, GS MMECD), it does not in itself guarantee the quality of individual projects. Each project must still demonstrate how it upholds integrity, innovates, and delivers real-world impact.
This is where BURN stands apart. The company is on track to become the first cookstove developer to supply CCP-labelled credits, with around 400,000 credits expected to be available from Q4 2025. But more importantly, BURN has been proactively addressing the known challenges of the sector for years:
Where some projects rely on default values or remote surveys, BURN conducts in-household Kitchen Performance Tests (KPTs) over multiple days, ensuring real-world, verifiable data on stove usage and fuel savings.
Where stove adoption and stacking can undermine impacts, BURN invests in distribution agents, training, and ongoing awareness campaigns to help families integrate their stoves into daily life.
Where stove lifespans are often uncertain, BURN backs its products with industry-leading R&D (USD $2m annually), achieving lifetimes and usage rates that surpass sector averages (90%+ sustained use).
Where transparency and tracking are in question, BURN deploys unique serial numbers for every stove, independent audits, and digital monitoring tools (including SIM-enabled stoves) to ensure no double counting and full traceability.
In a tightening policy and buyer environment, where regulators and corporates are demanding ever-higher standards of quality, BURN’s early positioning for CCP-labelling demonstrates both foresight and credibility. It is this combination of rigorous data, transparency, and social impact that makes BURN’s cookstove projects a leading example of where the sector is heading.
Seeing the whole picture
What stood out most during our visit to BURN was the dual nature of its impact.
On one side, within the factory itself, women are at the centre of the process - leading production, shaping design, and finding empowerment through meaningful work. The care and precision that goes into each stove was clear to see, with quality treated not as a target but as a value embedded in every stage of production.
On the other side, in the households where the stoves are used, the benefits were equally tangible. Women spoke about the time saved each day, the cleaner air in their kitchens, and the small but vital financial savings that, in this context, can make the difference between hardship and stability for entire families.
Even as a large-scale operation, BURN manages to keep a sense of personal responsibility and attention to detail across the whole lifecycle of its stoves. In doing so, it sets a benchmark for what high-quality, integrity-driven projects should look like in the voluntary carbon market. We are proud to partner with BURN as we work together to ensure the VCM delivers real, lasting impact where it matters most.
Summary: The case for high-quality cookstove projects
Funding improved cookstove projects like BURN’s cookstove project, enables your company to:
Align with new ICVCM standards for high-integrity carbon credits and use the purchase of those credits in your sustainability strategy. Supply chain due diligence requirements increasingly favour projects with transparent, auditable impact measurement
Support a high-quality, locally-run and data-driven project which is producing measurable and visible social and environmental impacts. Employee engagement surveys consistently show higher satisfaction & employee retention rates when companies demonstrate authentic community impact
Mitigate risk and generate stakeholder trust by supporting an innovative project which has been reviewed and assessed by Ecologi’s team. As CSRD and other mandatory ESG reporting frameworks expand, projects with robust monitoring infrastructure support these compliance requirements
Support the scaling of one of Drawdown’s Highly Recommended climate solutions. Drawdown's 'Highly Recommended' status provides science-based validation for climate strategy alignment - critical for sustainability leaders looking for further credible 3rd party endorsement
Secure allocation in this high-demand project
Schedule a free consultation with our commercial impact team to discuss and design a long-term carbon credit strategy aligned to your carbon reduction goals.
References and further reading
Ministry of Energy (MoE) (2019) Kenya Cooking Sector Study: Assessment of the supply and demand of cooking solutions at household level. Nairobi: Government of Kenya. Available at: https://rise.esmap.org/data/files/library/kenya/Electricity%20Access/Kenya_MoE-Kenya%20Cooking%20Sector%20Study_2019.pdf
Gold Standard (2025) Monitoring Report: BURN Stoves Project in Kenya (GS ID 5642). Geneva: Gold Standard.
Hing, S. and Gadgil, A. (2023) ‘Sensors show long-term dis-adoption of purchased improved cookstoves in rural India, while surveys miss it entirely’, Development Engineering, 8, 100111. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.deveng.2023.100111
Acumen (2023) Recipe for Success: Lessons from Acumen’s Cookstoves Investments. Acumen. Available at: https://acumen.org/reports/recipe-for-success-report/
Berkouwer, S. J. M. P. (2022) [Credit, Attention, and Externalities in the Adoption of Energy Efficient Technologies by Low-Income Households† by Susanna Berkouwer. Available at: http://www.susannaberkouwer.com/files/theme/BerkouwerJMP.pdf