Africa Institutional Clean Cooking Platform (AICCP)

Institutional kitchens—schools, hospitals, prisons, universities, large canteens—are one of the fastest pathways to measurable, high-confidence emissions reductions and immediate health and productivity gains. The global need remains immense: International Energy Agency estimates ~2.3 billion people still lack access to clean cooking under today’s policies. In parallel, World Health Organization estimates ~2.9 million premature deaths each year are attributable to household air pollution from polluting fuels.

The International Energy Agency also estimates that universal clean cooking access by 2030 is achievable with ~USD 8 billion per year in investment—underscoring how solvable the financing gap is when pipelines are structured and scaled.

For instance, in East Africa, the institutional reliance on biomass is stark: one widely-cited analysis indicates ~90% of public schools rely on firewood. In Kenya specifically, the education sector’s demand is described as extremely high—~10 million trees annually—and the same source cites up to ~56 acres of forest per school per year to sustain cooking needs (illustrating the deforestation linkage). Critically, the economic case is equally compelling: when cleaner/efficient institutional cooking systems are deployed, some installations report up to ~70% reductions in cooking energy expenses, freeing scarce budgets back to education and services.

What often blocks scale is not technology—it is the economics of implementation, performance assurance, and verification across many sites. AICCP is built to solve that through aggregation, meaning:

Standardized designs and procurement across hundreds/ thousands of kitchens (lower unit costs, faster rollout).
Digitized, auditable MRV (dMRV) that reduces transaction friction and keeps portfolios “audit-ready” continuously; AICCP is intentionally designed to support high-integrity monitoring
Portfolio economics: fixed costs (programme design, monitoring systems, verification cycles, registry processes) are spread across a large pipeline, making investment and buyer participation more rational at scale.

AICCP will explore multiple commercialization routes—selected country-by-country based on host-country regulations and readiness:

VCM participation (corporate/private demand), consistent with high-integrity market expectations.
Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) where host-country authorization, accounting, and bilateral demand align.
International Civil Aviation Organization CORSIA where applicable, noting ICAO CORSIA maintains a list of approved Emissions Unit Programmes for CORSIA-eligible units (subject to phase/period rules).

For carbon accounting, Verst Carbon is registry-agnostic—open to developing under any suitable carbon standard that best fits the technology pathway, monitoring feasibility, integrity requirements, and the host-country context.

Call to Partners

AICCP is actively seeking institution owners/operators, private sector solution providers and OEMs (EPC/e-cooking, thermal systems, LPG/biogas/ethanol/electric cooking, metering/IoT), fuel and logistics firms, ESCo-style implementers, carbon buyers and lenders, and development partners to convert scattered upgrades into a scaled, auditable climate-finance pipeline—where impact is verifiable, investment-ready, and replicable across thousands of kitchens.

Africa Institutional Clean Cooking Platform (AICCP)

Call to Partners

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