Ghana's Cookstove Carbon Market: From Pipeline to Performance

Ghana's Carbon Market Office has released its 2025-2026 half-year report. The numbers are striking: 36 cookstove projects targeting over 5.1 million stoves by 2030, 12.7 MtCO2e in authorised ITMOs, and the first end-to-end ITMO transfer in African history. But behind these figures, a deeper shift is underway — one that changes what "project-ready" means for stove suppliers.

A market analysis for carbon project developers, climate-finance partners, and programme operators evaluating Ghana's clean cooking opportunity.

1. Scale: A Market Moving from Framework to Delivery

Ghana was the first country in Africa to complete the full Article 6.2 cycle — authorisation, issuance, transfer, and reporting — when 11,733 ITMOs were transferred to Switzerland in June 2025. The credits originated from an Envirofit cookstove project distributing 60,000 stoves across rural Ghana, with a further 120,000 planned in Phases II and III.

As of mid-2026, the pipeline has grown substantially:

Clean cooking is the single largest technology category in the pipeline, accounting for 58% of all project applications. Within the cookstove segment, charcoal stoves represent 42% of applications, followed by wood stoves at 35%, with electric stoves, LPG, and hydrogen stoves making up the remainder.

2. Five Bilateral Channels — and Where Cookstoves Fit

Ghana has established Article 6 cooperation with five countries, creating multiple pathways for cookstove project financing:

Under the Ghana-Switzerland agreement, 8 out of 13 KliK Foundation projects have received authorisation, representing 9.4 million tonnes of potentially transferable ITMOs. Authorised cookstove projects include Up-energy Group's charcoal and electric cooking activities, and BURN's household electric cookstove distribution.

Under the Ghana-Singapore agreement, 5 cookstove-related projects have already cleared Technical Advisory Committee review, including Relief International's Gyapa improved cookstoves (all regions), EcoLinks' Ghana Clean Cooking Initiative (Ashanti and Central Regions), and BURN's electric and TPDDTEC v4.0 stoves.

The 20 VCM projects seeking authorisation are mainly cookstove projects, according to the report.

3. The National Requirements: What "Article 6-Ready" Means for Hardware

The report's most significant signal for the cookstove industry is on page 75: Ghana's National Requirements for Cookstove Projects. These are not methodology suggestions — they are conditions that project developers must meet to receive and maintain authorisation.

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2. fNRB Default Value of 35%Biomass stove developers must use the 35% default fraction of non-renewable biomass until country-specific values are published. When global defaults update, the new values automatically apply. Ghana's fNRB was revised from 0.30 to 0.35 during the Singapore track — meaning crediting volumes are directly affected by this parameter.

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   KPT with National Laboratory Engagement

5. Projects must engage Ghana's two national cookstove laboratories in designing and implementing Kitchen Performance Tests (KPT). Quarterly KPTs are required in the first year of implementation, transitioning to annual KPTs thereafter. Monitoring data must be submitted to the CMO for random sample selection prior to KPT execution.

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9. 20% Sensor-Based Continuous Monitoring

10. Projects must select 20% of KPT samples for sensor-based continuous monitoring, with fair distribution across sampled stoves. The monitoring report must assess baseline stove replacement rate to determine fuel-switch risk, and provide evidence of seasonal cooking effects on that risk.

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14. Beneficiary Profiling and Spatial Mapping

15. Projects must justify beneficiary selection criteria — baseline stoves, income distribution, rural/urban mix. KPT samples must reflect these criteria. A spatial map showing the distribution of sampled KPT households and sales data must be provided.

    
    

4. The First Transfer: A Cookstove Precedent

The 11,733 ITMOs transferred to Switzerland originated from the Transformative Cookstove Activity in Rural Ghana — a project distributing 60,000 Envirofit cookstoves, with an authorised emission-reduction potential of 3.2 MtCO2e. This was the first issuance of its kind in Africa and, at the time, the largest single transfer of Article 6 credits worldwide.

The report notes that by the next half of 2026, the CMO aims to issue and transfer an additional 30,000 ITMOs from the registry. This means the cookstove project pipeline is moving from authorisation into active verification and transfer — the stage where hardware performance data matters most.

5. VVB Performance: A Market-Wide Signal

The report includes an unusually candid assessment of Validation and Verification Body (VVB) performance. Across 32 assignments completed by 11 VVBs, the average weighted score was 2.25 out of 5 — below the standard the CMO aims to hold. No VVB earned an "A" grade; only one reached "B".

The CMO's response is instructive: from January 2027, it will mandate opening and closing meetings as non-negotiable deliverables, set minimum-grade thresholds for continued engagement, and cap the share any single VVB can hold.

6. South-South Cooperation: Ghana as a Regional Template

In 2025, Ghana hosted delegations from Rwanda, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique as part of knowledge-exchange initiatives. Delegations visited composting, clean cookstove, and electric bike project sites. Ghana's framework — including the cookstove national requirements — is being studied as a template by neighbouring countries.

This means the monitoring standards established in Ghana are likely to influence requirements across the region. Project developers building multi-country pipelines should expect similar KPT, sensor monitoring, and beneficiary profiling requirements to appear in other Article 6 host countries.

7. Pipeline Concentration and Delivery Risk

The report itself flags a structural risk: clean cooking accounts for 41-58% of the project pipeline depending on the measure used, and energy-sector activities broadly for approximately 64%. The CMO notes that this concentration "raises over-supply and additionality risk."

For hardware suppliers, this concentration has a practical implication: when millions of stoves are targeted within the same timeframe, production capacity, batch consistency, and delivery scheduling become project-critical. A supplier that can demonstrate manufacturing consistency at volume — not just prototype performance — becomes a strategic partner rather than a commodity vendor.

8. Lessons from the Report: What the CMO Itself Says

The report's "Lessons Learnt" section (page 74) includes several observations directly relevant to hardware suppliers:

• "Article 6 is not a one-man show — involve all actors."The CMO explicitly acknowledges that successful implementation requires participation from all stakeholders, including hardware suppliers. This aligns with our view that manufacturing partners should be engaged early in project design, not merely at the procurement stage.

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• "Authorisation has to be approved with environmental integrity and investment considerations."The CMO is actively balancing integrity and investment. Suppliers whose products can support both — through verified performance data and cost-effective production — are positioned to strengthen both sides of this equation.

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• "Article 6 results are not immediate but have medium to long-term outlook."Multi-year project horizons mean stove durability and consistent performance across monitoring cycles are not optional — they are built into the project economics from the start.

9. How We Support Ghana-Linked Projects

At SSM Eco, we bring nearly five decades of clean-cooking stove manufacturing experience to projects across different markets. Our product range spans wood, charcoal, pellet, and institutional stoves — covering the technology mix that dominates Ghana's pipeline.

For project developers operating under Ghana's Article 6 framework, we focus on the areas where manufacturing quality directly supports compliance:

Conclusion

Ghana's 2025-2026 report is significant not only for what it shows — 91 projects, 12.7 MtCO2e authorised, the first African ITMO transfer — but for what it signals. Clean cooking is moving deeper into carbon markets, and the systems behind these projects are maturing. The question is no longer only how many stoves can be distributed. It is increasingly whether the hardware can consistently perform across monitoring cycles, support KPT and sensor-based evidence, and maintain the performance baseline that underpins credited emission reductions.

At SSM Eco, we see manufacturing quality becoming part of environmental integrity. And we are ready to support that transition — one stove, one batch, one project at a time.