Over the past 12 years, DelAgua has prided itself on its integrity throughout the credit generation process within our Live Well programme. This programme has provided improved and fuel-efficient cook stoves to 1.6 million rural households across Rwanda, The Gambia & Sierra Leone. By the end of Q2 2025, the total number of stoves distributed will be 2 million, as we are currently planning large scale distributions in Sierra Leone & Rwanda.
We invest heavily in household visits, which consist of follow-up support and education to all households who receive our stove, delivered by our 7,000 community-based workers. This continuous education drives usage and long-term behaviour change, enabling households to adapt to clean cooking. In Q4 2024 alone, we visited 274,184 households; 260,694 in Rwanda and 13,490 in The Gambia to engage our stove users on the multiple benefits of clean cooking and how to efficiently use the stove.
Critically, the Live Well programme is one of the very few carbon projects to sign Letters of Authorization (LoAs) with 3 host governments. The Rwanda LoA was signed in October 2023; The Gambia in April 2024 and Sierra Leone in August 2024. This is a complex, lengthy process and starts from trusted relationships: working in partnership with host governments has always been at the heart of how we operate, and this has enabled us to secure LoAs. We have also gone a step further to protect our buyers with the creation of Corresponding Adjustment Protect, the first Corresponding Adjustment insurance solution.
With multiple accuracy checks in place alongside our existing comprehensive in-person household visit programme, we are confident our credits can pass the most rigorous integrity scrutiny.
Verra has provided detailed guidelines for project developers like DelAgua to transition projects from older methodologies and to requantify already issued credits under these methodologies to align with the latest methodology requirements. To requantify previously verified reductions and removals, Verra requires DelAgua to apply the most recent version of the applied methodology, VM0050, a process that we have already started. This means that DelAgua’s previously issued credits will be CORSIA eligible after the requantification process is finalized.
The requantification process includes the following steps:
Since the ICAO announcement in December, DelAgua has submitted completed notification forms to Verra for our 4150 and 4000 projects. We are working with SustainCert, an accredited VVB, to complete the validation and verification of the drafted project documents, after which we will submit these to Verra. Similarly, SustainCert have also been contracted to complete the 3699 Project Deviation which will result in the Project voluntarily adopting the latest methodology from MP2 onwards.
We anticipate that this process will be finalized by late Q3 2025, after which our credits are aligned to CORSIA requirements.
DelAgua has consistently gone beyond the minimum requirements of the methodologies under which our projects are registered, and this is facilitating our pathway of transition to the latest Verra methodology.
In October 2024, Verra released VM0050, the latest cookstove methodology that is compulsory to transition to by 2027. This new cookstoves methodology relies on the best-available science and technology to credibly quantify the emission reductions achieved by clean cookstoves. DelAgua welcomes updating quality standards to cookstoves’ methodologies; a push for greater accuracy is the right push for the whole sector, which has faced integrity concerns over the past 2 years.
Following the release of VM0050, our teams immediately began transition planning of projects from VMR0006 to align with the new methodology.
On the ground, our teams have been conducting Kitchen Performance Tests (KPTs) at scale and recently concluded a 4-day training workshop on Water Boiling Tests to confirm our stove’s efficiency as part of the new methodology guidelines. These guidelines require KPTs to be conducted annually to directly measure the amount of wood being used in the project scenario before comparing it to the baseline fuel consumption. These are completed alongside updated usage surveys to act as a triangulation method and point of comparison.
Over the past 2 months, we have successfully completed 778 KPTs; 478 in Rwanda and 300 in The Gambia.
Preliminary data from these tests aligns with what DelAgua has previously reported in our monitoring surveys regarding firewood consumption & stove usage patterns.
Water Boiling Tests (WBTs) are another additional requirement of the VM0050 methodology. WBTs essentially measure the time it takes for a specific volume of water to reach the boiling point on a stove. The new VM0050 methodology emphasizes the use of the WBT to determine stove thermal efficiency, requiring developers to follow standardized protocols for accurate and transparent measurements.
DelAgua organized for a specialist from the Center for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation (CREEC) in Uganda to train DelAgua staff on how to effectively carry out WBTs in the field. In the coming weeks, our teams will be in the field completing these WBTs that evidence our stove’s efficiency, a prerequisite to finalizing our projects’ transition to the new methodology.
After transitioning these projects to the new methodology, all further monitoring periods and credits will be issued under the new VM0050 methodology, making all future issuances CORSIA aligned.
We are confident that Verra will finalize the re-quantification processes and by Q3 of 2025, DelAgua expects to have more than 3 million CORSIA eligible credits available annually.
In addition to registering under eligible methodologies, project developers must have a Letter of Authorization (LoA) from their host country that correspondingly adjusts them – very few project developers in the cookstove sector meet this criterion, and we know from experience that securing LoAs is a complex process which above all needs established, trusted relationships between the project developer and governments.
So, with all key methodological requirements and LoAs in place, DelAgua is in position to meet the enormous demand for CORSIA eligible credits.
Demand for CORSIA-eligible carbon credits from airlines is projected to be 106–137 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2024–2026. This demand is expected to exceed the supply of eligible credits, given the heightened standards for quality.
DelAgua is open to collaborating with airlines and other institutions to meet emissions targets, while delivering real impact to millions of people in Rwanda, The Gambia & Sierra Leone.
Feel free to contact me directly by email, write to [email protected].
Euan McDougall
Chief Executive Officer
