Top three benefits:
- Develop new income streams to fund expansion.
- Use carbon credits to subsidise products to increase the addressable market.
- Close the affordability gap to scale access to clean energy solutions.
Top three challenges:
- Acquiring and sustaining the right certification of carbon credits can be a time consuming process.
- Maintaining liquidity given the mismatch between the timing of costs incurred to set up a carbon project and income generated from the carbon project.
- Managing carbon price volatility.
Photo credit: GDC
Trailblazers:
- ATEC (GDC member) is a manufacturer and distributor of biodigesters that sold 11.5M tons of carbon credits to ENGIE (read more here).
- BURN collects usage data from their e-cookers to support carbon credit sales.
- EcoZoom Cookstoves claims to mitigate 2-3 tons of CO2 per cookstove per year
- Emerging Cooking Solutions are leveraging carbon credits in Zambia
- Let us know who else should be on this list
Resources:
- Get introduced to the carbon markets in Africa with this Dalberg x TED video.Acumen wrote about how carbon credits are driving down the costs of climate-friendly goods in Africa.
- The Clean Cooking Alliance is hosting working groups for responsible carbon finance.
- A new study from the Container Based Sanitation Alliance finds that carbon credits can provide a viable revenue for container-based sanitation providers in urban areas.