The technological innovation in this use case is defined within the framework of ‘cooking as a business.’ FCF has been engaged in installation of improved cookstoves (ICS) in rural households that presently cook using firewood.

These stoves will be fitted with heat sensors that can detect when someone is cooking and therefore track stove use in real time. So far, we have deployed more than thousands of clean cookstoves with sensors in two villages in the Raichur district – Ramanhal and Chickhonkuni. These households typically cook using firewood on traditional mud stoves. As part of a carbon project FCF has installed clean cookstoves in more than 18,000 households in Raichur since 2011.

However,

as per our experience the costs of remote data capture need to be reduced further. High sensor costs seem to be a major factor preventing data monitoring being scaled up. It is extremely important that low-cost solutions are available. They must be affordable to achieve high penetration at the household level. We firmly believe that lower costs will expedite upscaling.

Secondly,

the lack of financial policies at national level (especially policies related to blockchain and regulation for crypto-currencies) is an obstacle to cross-border carbon purchasing and cookstove user transactions. There has not yet been any policy-level intervention to introduce DLT/blockchain technologies into carbon financing, but this is just what is needed to make this process more transparent and to avoid double counting.

Thirdly,

it is important that data monitoring and blockchain technologies are approved by a carbon standard such as Gold Standard (GS) to ensure greater acceptance on the market. With its partners, GS is already working on exploring the potential of blockchain and other DLTs in robust climate action. We have also initiated discussions with GS on the present use case. However, it is still too early to fully understand issues concerning implementation and replication. Very generally, the investment needed to scale up such technologies is broadly lacking. Our use case would be helped if the private sector were more committed to net zero development.