Accelerating the transition to ‘clean’ cooking in Cambodia

80% of the rural population in Cambodia does not have access to clean cooking (ESMAP, 2017). Most rural Cambodians cook with wood (77%) and 6% cook with charcoal, spending approximately 1.5 hours a day on cooking. Cooking on traditional biomass stoves not only contributes to deforestation, local natural resource degradation and increased greenhouse gas emissions, but also has severe negative impacts on health through the smoke that pollutes households and the ambient air.

Since July 2021, International Development Enterprise (iDE) Cambodia, in partnership with Nexus for Development, received the mandate from the Cambodia Climate Change Alliance (CCCA) to scale pilots to accelerate the uptake of efficient electric cooking appliances to mitigate climate impacts through avoided deforestation and reduced emissions.

The project builds on iDE Innovation Labs previous pilots involving market testing of a range of electric cooking products, marketing and behavior change approaches, and Nexus for Development expertise in carbon project development and financial mechanisms.

In this capacity, Nexus will qualify and quantify the accompanying positive climate benefits through avoided deforestation and reduced emissions and identify financing mechanism(s) to incentivize the transition to electric cooking in Cambodia.

Market-based approach & rigorous standard

The project tackles two of the many barriers to adopting new cooking technologies – financing and technology – while being sensitive to other factors (socio-cultural factors, health, and environmental impacts). Uptake of energy-efficient appliances brings climate mitigation benefits, with health, air quality, and livelihood co-benefits.

The project uses:

• a market-based approach, to increase awareness and adoption of clean cooking technologies among rural Cambodian households by demonstrating the benefits of clean cooking to the household.
• the new Gold Standard protocol and methodology on clean cooking projects to evaluate the potential for a certification to issue carbon credit and generate revenue.

Innovation & financing

The project will test:

• the uptake of new technology: the magnetic induction stoves, which is safer, cheaper, and uses less energy than alternatives, developed by ATEC*, combined with
• their sophisticated but simple PAYGO financing mechanism (smart meters connected to an app to monitor electricity consumption and pay for the technology in installments via mobile money), which has proven attractive and affordable.

Contribution

The project contributes directly to the implementation of Cambodia’s Climate Change Strategic Plan (CCCSP) 2014-23 through addressing Strategic Objective 4 (promoting and facilitating wider-spread adoption of low-carbon technologies) and MAFF’s Sectoral Climate Change Strategic Plan which aims to reduce GHG emissions by addressing deforestation and forest degradation.

Impacts can be framed through SDGs 7 (affordable clean energy), 11 (sustainable cities and communities), and 13 (climate change).

The project will run until September 2022. A workshop will be organized with private sector and government stakeholders where the results of the project will be presented for all the actors working in clean cooking energy in Cambodia to build up their strategies and solutions based on the findings of this project. Project reports will be disseminated within sector networks and making them freely available on the internet.