Carbon Market Myths - Cookstoves & Aviation Edition

Carbon markets, especially the aviation scheme CORSIA created by ICAO, can often sound mysterious, and sometimes suspicious. Add clean cookstove projects to the story and reactions get even stronger. Many people imagine abstract accounting tricks or loopholes, but most of the confusion comes from how unfamiliar the system is. The carbon market links sectors that normally never interact: international aviation, rural household energy, development finance, and environmental science. When those worlds collide, myths appear.

Myth 1: Airlines Are Just Paying to Pollute

One of the most common claims is that airlines are simply buying permission to continue emitting. In reality, airlines participating in CORSIA are under a compliance obligation, not making a voluntary donation or marketing purchase. They must measure their emissions on specific routes, report them annually, and offset growth above an agreed baseline by purchasing and permanently retiring approved carbon credits in registries such as Verra or Gold Standard.

Retirement matters because once a credit is retired it can never be used again. It does not erase the physical emission from the aircraft; instead it balances the climate impact by financing a verified reduction elsewhere while aviation technologies scale. Offsets therefore function less like permission and more like a temporary accounting bridge between today’s aircraft and tomorrow’s fuels.

Myth 2: Cookstove Reductions Can’t Be Measured

Another widespread belief is that cookstove projects rely on guesses about how much wood a family might have burned. Modern projects operate very differently. They rely on large statistical samples, in-home monitoring devices, controlled cooking tests, fuel weighing exercises, and repeated field surveys. Standards intentionally apply conservative assumptions so that uncertainty reduces the number of credits rather than inflating them.

The goal is not perfect precision (which is impossible in any real-world system) but reliable minimum estimates. In practice, a project usually credits less reduction than it likely achieves.

Myth 3: People Don’t Actually Use the Stoves

A common criticism is that households receive improved cookstoves but continue cooking the old way, so the emission reductions never really occur. That assumption comes from early development programs where equipment was distributed once and rarely checked again. Modern carbon projects work differently because credits depend on ongoing performance, not just delivery.

Many projects now monitor usage directly. Some stoves contain temperature sensors that record cooking events, and field teams carry out regular surveys and visits to confirm adoption. Methodologies also discount partial use, as if families still rely on traditional fires part of the time, only the measured share of fuel savings is credited.

Because carbon revenue depends on verified usage, project developers must keep stoves functioning through repairs, maintenance, and training. The financial incentive therefore supports continued behavior change rather than one-time distribution.

Myth 4: All Carbon Credits Are the Same

There is also a tendency to treat every carbon credit as identical. In reality, credits differ in risk profile and verification approach. Industrial gas destruction credits are chemically precise but rare. Forestry credits depend on land permanence over decades. Cookstove credits depend on ongoing usage behavior and continuous monitoring.

Because of these differences, aviation rules only allow specific methodologies that meet particular criteria. A tonne of carbon dioxide is physically the same everywhere, but confidence in measuring that tonne varies, and the market reflects that.

Myth 5: Offsets Delay Real Decarbonization

Finally, many worry offsets delay real decarbonization. Yet aviation’s transition depends primarily on technology availability, not motivation. Sustainable aviation fuel production remains limited, aircraft replacement cycles last decades, and hydrogen aircraft are still experimental.

Offsets fill the time gap between present-day aircraft and future propulsion systems. Removing them would not stop flights; it would simply remove climate finance while the sector waits for viable alternatives.

Conclusion

Cookstove carbon projects feel counterintuitive because they connect a jet engine at cruising altitude to a cooking pot in a village kitchen. Climate change itself is systemic, and climate policy tries to match financial flows to the fastest reductions available now while slower sectors evolve. Carbon markets are imperfect tools, yet they are designed to solve a practical problem: the world must reduce emissions immediately even when every technology cannot change immediately.

Written By: Benjamin Michelson