Cooking with gas from cow dung
In many rural households in India, cooking is done over simple open fireplaces in the home. This requires a lot of wood and causes toxic smoke. Respiratory and eye infections are very common, especially among women and children.
This project promotes small biogas plants for private households. They produce biogas from cow dung and certain organic household waste. This allows families to cook without any worries. There is no smoke any more, and the tedious chore of collecting wood is also dispensed with. Many women and children were busy collecting firewood one day a week; now they have more time to work and play. On top of that, because they are saving the forests and reducing carbon emissions by not burning any more wood, the project can finance itself through climate protection. The families have to get involved themselves when the system is installed. Eighteen thousand such plants have already been built, each with a capacity of 2 cubic meters.
The project contributes to the the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
In biogas facilities, biomass is fermented into biogas in sealed digesters. Biomass may consist of organic waste or dung from cows or other animals. In countries like India or Vietnam, families use the gas from small biogas plants for cooking. This reduces CO2 emissions that would be produced by cooking with wood or charcoal. Biogas plants also prevent methane from escaping into the atmosphere, as is the case when organic waste is stored in an open pit. Instead, the gas is fed from the closed digesters to specific cookers and thus provides an independent and renewable source of energy.
The project aims to contribute to these United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
TypeReduction
LocationIndia, Bagepalli
TechnologyBiogas
Registry ID768
Verified byTÜV NORD CERT GmbH
Estimated annual emission reductions61,100 t CO₂
Four criteria for projects to meet quality thresholds
The life cycle of a climate project
A climate project has a set life cycle consisting of various phases, from the feasibility assessment to the retirement of Verified Emission Reductions (VERs).
The project developer reviews the general feasibility of the project, the project design, and the financing. Then, the Project Design Document (PDD) is prepared, which contains all the basic information about the project, such as the objective, location, timeline, and duration.
In this phase, independent auditors examine the PDD and the information it contains. This phase often also involves field visits with on-side interviews and analyses. Auditors are accredited, impartial assessors who have to be approved by the relevant standard as a validation and verification body (VVB). TÜV Nord/Süd, S&A Carbon LLC., and SCS Global Services are examples of VVBs."
Once validated, the project can be registered with a standard such as the Verified Carbon Standard or the Gold Standard. All high-quality climate projects are based on international standards. They provide the framework for project design, construction, carbon accounting, and monitoring. Recognised standards make the climate project system and the projects themselves resilient, traceable, and credible.
After the climate project has been registered, the monitoring begins. Here, the project developers monitor and document the data of the project activities and progress. The duration of the monitoring phase varies from project to project: it can cover two years, but documentation over five or seven years is also possible.
At the end of each monitoring phase, a VVB checks and assesses whether the values and project activities stated in the monitoring report are correct. As with validation, visits to the project site are often part of the verification process.
Once verified, the emission reductions that were confirmed in the verification phase can be issued as VERs. The steps of monitoring, verification, and issuance of VERs are repeated regularly and are therefore considered as a cycle.
Once a VER has been used, it must be retired. This process is also reflected in the registry. If the financing of a climate project is done through ClimatePartner, the VERs are bundled in a system certified by TÜV Austria and then retired on a regular basis. This ensures that each VER can no longer be sold and is only used once, preventing double counting.
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