Surprise!! Carbon Credit Plan Flopped In Mozambique; "Improved" Cookstoves Were Cheap Junk, No Follow-Up Or Support

The simple stoves were being shipped out across Africa by the millions, and few people here saw the downside. The stoves were free. They were pitched as an upgrade to the charcoal grill and wood campfire cooking methods in the area. And they promised solutions to the massive problems of deforestation and smoke pollution. But as the stoves were handed out in this part of Mozambique in 2021, Victoria Jose Arriscado said she was struck by how cheap they looked — just a few metal parts atop clay bricks and mud.

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Arriscado and others had received the stoves as part of a program run by D.C.-based C-Quest Capital, a producer of carbon credits — specialized investments that some of the world’s largest companies buy to offset their planet-warming emissions. The company distributes stoves that it says are more efficient than traditional campfires, reducing the amount of wood burned and protecting users’ lungs. The company calculates the reduction in emissions, turns that into a commodity, and sells it to companies, which then claim their operations are contributing less to climate change.

But C-Quest’s program in Mozambique — marketed as a climate solution that also produces a better life for impoverished Africans — failed to deliver on either pledge, according to an investigation by The Washington Post. The inquiry shows how, in this area of Mozambique, the pressure to produce carbon credits at a low cost led the company to cut corners in a way that ultimately backfired on the people it was trying to help. Most directly, C-Quest failed to take steps to ensure that its clay and metal cookstoves were being widely used and working properly, critical to ensuring that the project was reducing greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation.

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But in June, C-Quest made a startling public disclosure. The company said a new management team had uncovered acts of “wrongdoing” by its former CEO, who’d stepped down several months earlier. The company did not provide specifics but said the over-issuance of “millions” of carbon credits had “resulted” from former head Ken Newcombe’s actions. C-Quest has reported the alleged wrongdoing to U.S. federal law enforcement and an outside organization, Verra, that certifies carbon credit projects. C-Quest says it will cancel the over-issued credits, and Verra has said it is suspending 27 cookstove projects, including the one in Mozambique. C-Quest says it will make a “clean break from past practices.” A spokesman for Newcombe released a statement denying wrongdoing, saying the accusations against him are part of a private equity scheme “to discredit Dr. Newcombe and blame him for the very issues he had been working to fix and prevent from recurring.” Newcombe, who worked previously at Goldman Sachs and the World Bank, is widely seen as one of the pioneers of the voluntary carbon market. The statement said he had “prioritized integrity and long-term impact on the climate and the rural poor.”

Ed. - Emphasis added.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/24/carbon-credits-cook-stoves-africa/

https://wapo.st/3ZaexhI