Clean cooking projects are an emissions-reduction project type within the community & distributed devices segment of the carbon market. They are designed to reduce emissions by improving stove efficiency and/or switching households to lower-emissions cooking fuels. The carbon benefit comes from lower fuel use and/or lower-emission fuel choice relative to baseline cooking behavior. Common project configurations include Improved biomass cookstoves; electric or LPG transitions where covered by methodology.

The strongest projects increasingly rely on better field data about stove usage and fuel stacking rather than simple distribution counts. These projects often sit close to households and communities, which can create meaningful health, cost, and time-saving co-benefits alongside emissions reductions, but usage, adoption, and monitoring quality matter a great deal. For buyers and program designers, the most important diligence questions are: Are adoption, stacking, and sustained usage measured well? Is non-renewable biomass fraction robust? Are direct measurements used where possible?