UN Climate Change News, 9 October 2026 - Cleaner cooking projects can now seek credits under the Paris Agreement's carbon market after the UN body overseeing it adopted two new methodologies for household cooking.
Around 2.1 billion people still cook over open fires or inefficient stoves using polluting fuels. Cleaner cooking can cut greenhouse gas emissions and ease pressure on forests, while also reducing harmful household air pollution.
The decision by the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body opens the door for eligible projects that help households use less fuel or shift to cleaner ways of cooking to generate UN-backed carbon credits.
One methodology covers more efficient wood and charcoal burning cookstoves. The second supports a broader shift to cleaner, lower-emission household cooking.
The methodologies set out which projects can qualify, how their emission reductions must be calculated and monitored, and what checks are required before credits can be issued. They apply standards previously agreed by the Supervisory Body to ensure that credits represent real, additional and conservatively calculated emission reductions.
"This decision gives cleaner cooking projects a new pathway under the UN carbon market, with clear rules to ensure that each credit represents a real and credible emission reduction," said Mkhuthazi Steleki, Chair of the Supervisory Body.
"We have a clear mandate from Parties to build a high-integrity mechanism that supports the goals of the Paris Agreement. These methodologies put that mandate into practice, combining pathways for cleaner cooking projects with robust safeguards that support confidence in the mechanism."
Accounting for reversal risk
Alongside the methodologies, the Supervisory Body also adopted the first version of a tool to assess reversal risk in cleaner cooking and other activities that reduce the use of non-renewable biomass.
The decision puts an important accounting safeguard in place. It recognizes that emission reductions from cleaner cooking may be reversed and requires those reversals to be addressed.
Without this safeguard, credits could continue to be counted even after the underlying emission reductions had been undone, creating inconsistencies across the implementation of successive national climate plans, also known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
The tool will be updated as stronger evidence and improved data become available, with future versions expected to cover other types of activities. Countries may use country-specific values for natural risks where suitable data is available, allowing the approach to reflect national circumstances while maintaining consistent accounting.
Expanding the UN carbon market
The new methodologies add cleaner cooking to the growing list of activities covered by the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism.
Previous methodologies adopted by the Supervisory Body cover landfill gas, nitrous oxide from nitric acid production, and grid-connected renewable electricity. Together, the methodologies now cover activities that reduce emissions from three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
The new methodologies deliver on the Body's priority this year to bring a broad range of key sectors and activities into the mechanism.
Next steps at COP31
At COP31, the Body will present its annual report to Parties to the Paris Agreement, who may clarify or expand its mandate and guide future work on new methodologies and market rules.
