Controversy and accountability in C-Quest Capital cookstove projects

Last week C-Quest Capital, a carbon project developer, made a significant move toward transparency by sharing that it over-issued millions of carbon credits in connection with its clean cooking programs registered with Verra. In practice, this means that C-Quest Capital projects had overestimated their emission reductions, resulting in significant over-crediting. C-Quest plans to cancel any over-issued credits. At Calyx Global, we applaud the accountability and transparency displayed by the carbon project developer. 

Calyx Global’s assessment of C-Quest Capital projects

Over-crediting risk can originate from several overestimated parameters deployed by a given project, resulting in a final risk rating, which can heavily impact a project’s overall weighting. To learn more about this process and the parameters involved - see our Recipe for Success paper or The Calyx Global Improved Cookstove Ratings Explainer. 

Calyx Global has rated 11 projects where C-Quest was either the main project proponent or where it was a project partner. In all cases:

• Over 60% of those projects were our lowest two rating categories: E or E+.
• The remaining projects received a D rating.
• Over 80% of the projects had either low or low to medium risks of non-additionality.
• All 11 projects had a high risk of over-crediting.

In summary, the key issue driving our ratings of these projects was the high risk of over-crediting, which is not uncommon among cookstove projects, as illustrated in the graphs below. A recent study in Nature puts the level of over-crediting at an average of 9.2 times. For most of our cookstove projects, a key factor impacting over-crediting in this project type is the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB) value applied by the project (more on fNRB here). However, there are a number of over-crediting risks associated with the monitoring of project performance. For example, the adoption rate (number of stoves used by project households), usage rate (% of meals cooked using new project device), stove-stacking (use of baseline stove in combination with the new project stove) and rebound effect (the increase in cooking activity as a result of the more efficient stove). Further, monitoring the efficiency of the project device, including any decline in efficiency, is paramount to claiming accurate ongoing emission reductions claims.

Despite this, cookstove projects have great potential to contribute to climate and human health along with a variety of other Sustainable Development Goals, which fuels their popularity. Our assessment of 106 cookstove projects has shown that cookstove projects often have low or low to medium risks of non-additionality, meaning that carbon revenue was likely required to implement the project activity in the project area. This is illustrated below.

Currently, most cookstove projects do not receive a strong rating from Calyx Global. However, this can change if cookstove projects were to make a more conservative emission reduction claim. For example, a project could utilize the best available, independent fNRB values, apply a significantly more efficient stove compared to the baseline device, apply a conservative value for baseline fuel consumption and improve monitoring approaches. If they do so and reduce the risk of over-crediting, most projects in our system could receive an A or B rating (see graphs below). 

We acknowledge that some projects may have residual risks of non-additionality, non-permanence or overlapping claims, but as is noted below, these are minor compared to over-crediting, which predominantly drives the low ratings for cookstove projects.

Recent updates

Since the original notification of over-issuance, C-Quest has put 27 projects on hold as it conducts an internal investigation. According to C-Quest Capital, it is also undertaking actions to improve future outcomes, including adopting improved measurement and reporting processes and additional operations safeguards and policies. All of the projects that Calyx Global has rated from C-Quest Capital have been put on hold as part of this process.

C-Quest’s proposed improved measurement and reporting approach includes a 95/5 confidence level of its sampling protocol, which it says will provide more accurate information and results than, say, an 80/20 approach. That said, no measurement and reporting improvement can counteract malfeasance, as was part of the accusations in this case. However, the improved operations and policy process that C-Quest commits to may make a difference, assuming they improve their internal quality control and safeguard procedures.

An important pillar of integrity

For the voluntary carbon market (VCM) to live up to its full potential, the market must build trust, facilitate stakeholder engagement and optimize for outcomes. Efforts to be transparent and accountable such as this are ones we hope to see more of as part of VCM 2.0.

To learn more about fNRB and cookstove projects, see our “Cookstoves and Biodigesters” series.