The European Union’s plan to use international carbon credits to help meet its 2040 climate target could provide a “super solution” to accelerate the rollout of cleaner cooking technologies across the Global South, according to France’s top climate envoy .
With the bloc set to become a “big investor” in carbon credits as a result of its new climate law, efforts to replace polluting cooking stoves with cleaner alternatives could be scaled up, French climate ambassador Benoît Faraco told a summit on clean cooking hosted by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Faraco said he had discussed that possibility with French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies, which is involved in clean cooking offsetting programmes in Africa and has major plans to expand the adoption of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for use in cookstoves in developing countries.
Controversial carbon credits
Starting in 2036, the EU will be allowed to count “high-quality” international carbon credits generated by partner countries under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement towards up to 5% of the emissions reductions required to meet its 2040 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 90%. Several climate experts and activists accused the bloc of watering down its commitments by including carbon credits in its climate target for the first time.
The amended climate law adopted in early February says the credits will need to follow “robust safeguards” and “ensure environmental integrity”. The European Commission and its member states have yet to determine which types of credits would qualify or how they would be sourced.
But a French diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Climate Home News that clean cooking should be considered among the sectors to be supported through Article 6 funding, adding that France was willing to engage with its partners on the topic.
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Clean cooking credits have regularly faced significant criticism from researchers and campaigners who argue that climate benefits are often exaggerated and weak monitoring can undermine claims of real emission reductions.
“There is a significant risk in trading credits that have repeatedly failed to deliver on their promises, which has been a particular issue with cookstove projects,” said Benja Faecks, an expert at Brussels-based NGO Carbon Market Watch (CMW), adding that it was “far too early” for France to make recommendations on specific credit types.
The French diplomatic source told Climate Home News that France will continue to advocate for the EU to forge partnerships with countries to develop a high-quality carbon credits supply chain.
Total’s cooking gas expansion
Speaking at the IEA summit held in Paris late last month, Faraco said he had discussed the use of carbon credits to fund clean cooking initiatives with TotalEnergies a few days earlier when he joined the French multinational on a visit to deliver LPG cooking units.
TotalEnergies says it is investing over $400 million in LPG infrastructure – including canister storage and filling stations – to give 100 million people in Africa and India access to cleaner cooking alternatives to wood and charcoal.
But while the company promotes the programme as a win for public health and the climate, it also stands to benefit commercially: the rollout would create a vast new market to absorb the growing volumes of oil and gas the company wants to produce across Africa.
In Uganda, where TotalEnergies is leading the development of a major and controversial oil drilling project on the shores of Lake Albert, the French firm says it also provides “affordable” LPG cooking solutions to local communities aiming to avoid “critical deforestation”.
Campaigners have said that gas is not clean nor affordable and pushing its adoption for cooking would lock vulnerable communities into a fossil fuel system. Faecks from CMW said the distribution of LPG cookstoves “very much suits Total’s interests”.
TotalEnergies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Major carbon market player
The French company has long been involved in carbon markets and, in 2025, spent $73 million to buy carbon credits used to offset, on paper, the greenhouse gas emissions caused by its oil and gas operations.
Last year, it announced that it had partnered with a carbon credit developer to distribute 200,000 cookstoves to households in Rwanda that it said would prevent the emission of more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide over the next 10 years. TotalEnergies will acquire the credits produced by the project and use them from 2030 to offset some of its direct emissions.
“Clean cooking contributes to long-term social, economic and human development in a more sustainable way,” Arnaud Le Foll, senior vice-president new business and carbon neutrality at TotalEnergies, said at the time.
The post EU carbon credits could supercharge world’s clean cooking push, France says appeared first on Climate Home News.
EU carbon credits could supercharge world’s clean cooking push, France says
Unless you’re studying for a high school science exam, lithium, nickel, copper, and cobalt probably won’t carry much meaning beyond being elements on the periodic table. But if there is a time to pull out those dusty science books, it would be now.
Across various sectors, these minerals are of increasing importance, including – perhaps most prominently – renewable energy generation and storage, and electric vehicles; but also other large and growing sectors such as military and AI (e.g., for datacenters). And around the world, many governments and companies are competing to control who can dig them up.
The global minerals rush
These raw Earth materials are often called “critical minerals” by governments and the mining industry, typically a reflection of national political priorities rather than essential societal or energy transition needs. This risks turning these minerals into the focus of a new neo-colonial resource grab, with powerful countries and corporations racing to control them, and wasting their potential to power a fair and green transition.
Globally – from Chile, Argentina, DRC, Indonesia, Sweden to the deep sea – the extractivist rush for minerals puts vital ecosystems, peoples’ rights and the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and local communities at risk. The geopolitical scramble over minerals has also been linked to the current US government’s aggressive annexation threats to Greenland.
Minerals have different uses, and there are no guarantees that the minerals mined “in the name of energy transition” are used for wind turbines or energy storage. For example, big tech companies are consuming more and more of these minerals to expand AI infrastructure (such as datacenters). In addition to driving up energy demand and emissions, the vision of ‘progress’ advocated by big tech oligarchs also threatens to worsen extractive pressures on people and nature, and divert minerals away from energy transition. Moreover, mineral use in the expansion of AI-driven warfare systems has been found as a particularly concerning development.
In light of this, it is more important than ever to demand coordinated action to ensure that minerals are used where they matter most: principally, for a fast fair fossil fuel phase out and a transition to clean, affordable renewable energy and sustainable transport systems.
So how do we protect people and nature in the energy transition?
Reduce, recycle, restrict for a safeguarded energy transition
In a report commissioned by Greenpeace International, and authored by academics at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) in Australia, we’ve found that an ambitious energy transition can be achieved without mining in vital ecosystems – whether on land or at sea. With visionary leadership, sound policies, and innovative technologies, we can keep global warming within 1.5°C, safeguard vital ecosystems and reduce extractive pressures on people and nature.
Here’s five ways how:
1. Reduce mineral demand with improved public transport, car-sharing, and smaller, more efficient vehicles
Accessibility, efficiency, and reliability in how cities are governed make them great places to live in. Having improved public transport systems is one of the most effective ways to reduce the need for mineral-intensive electric vehicles and the batteries that power them. In addition to expanding high-quality public transport, employing car-sharing schemes, and investing in active mobility (e.g. walking and cycling infrastructure) would significantly decrease reliance on individual car ownership.
As an added bonus improving our public transport systems is essential not just for climate, but for connecting people to opportunities. Mobility justice is climate justice.
2. Incentivise and substitute battery technology towards alternatives requiring less lithium, cobalt, or nickel
Think about how many items you use that require batteries? Without it, our personal gadgets would be useless; we wouldn’t have advancement in items like electric cars or bikes; and batteries can also help store and use more eco-friendly sources of energy, such as solar and wind. But the production of large batteries is highly mineral-intensive.
Luckily, over the last decade, technological innovation has transformed the market. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, now widely commercialised, eliminate the need for cobalt and nickel, reducing pressure on these supply chains. At the same time, sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries are advancing rapidly, and offer a pathway to significantly reduce mineral demand for lithium, according to the report. It shows that, using innovative battery technologies and energy storage systems that do not require these key minerals would significantly reduce supply gaps for key minerals and ease potential development pressures for new mines targeting them.
3. Design for circularity and scale up recycling
We all know the drill by now – reduce, reuse, recycle. When it comes to transition minerals, this maxim is of key importance.
By maximising collection and the recovery of transition minerals from end-of-life transition technologies, recycling can significantly reduce the need for new extraction. Investing in advanced recycling technologies and collection systems, alongside policy incentives that reward high recycled mineral content in new products, ensures that transition minerals re-enter the supply chain.
Additional circularity measures like extending technologies’ lifespans, improving repairability, incentivising reuse, designing and standardising components for easy disassembly to help with repair and recycling, and enforcing extended producer responsibility (EPR), could also contribute to reducing overall mineral demands.
4. Prioritise mineral use for essential energy transition needs
Minerals are finite resources, and the practice of mining carries significant social, labour, and environmental risks. Therefore, the use of mineral resources should be prioritised where they matter most – in renewable energy and its storage and in electric mobility to enable a fast fair fossil fuel phase out.
Governments and industries must prioritise mineral use towards a fast, fair, and just energy transition. Coupled with supply chain transparency, prioritising minerals for energy transition ensures finite minerals are used to advance climate goals that benefit all people and the planet.
5. Protect key ‘Restricted Areas’ from mining development
Protecting human rights and ecological integrity is a non-negotiable foundation of a just and green transition. Restricted Areas have high environmental, ecological, and natural values, and may include Indigenous Peoples and local community territories. Defining and protecting these Restricted Areas is a crucial step to ensuring that mining of transition minerals respects the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to their territories, and does not destroy biodiversity, critical natural ecosystems, natural carbon storage, freshwater systems and oceans.
After all, what is “critical” here is not a minerals scramble largely driven by geopolitical rivalry. Neither the AI race, nor the power and profit chased by States and corporations.
Critical are the ecosystems that all living beings on the planet depend on.
Critical are the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
Critical is meeting peoples’ needs and ensuring that current and future generations can live in a safe climate.
For this, it’s essential for our world leaders to take courageous and coordinated action to protect people and the planet, and ensure our Earth’s minerals help create a green and just future, rather than being exploited for short-term profit.
Author: Elsa Lee is the Co-Head of Biodiversity at Greenpeace International
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