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
For the first time, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) made up 67% of new car sales in China in September, according to the latest data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
The figures show that NEVs, which include battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, captured a record share of sales, even though fewer were sold than last year.
This is because sales of combustion-engine cars are falling steeply, a trend that the CPCA has attributed to rising petrol prices following the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Indeed, sales of fuel-only cars were down 31% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2026, with plug-in hybrid sales down 26% – whereas battery EV sales were only down 4%.
One analyst tells Carbon Brief that China’s rapidly growing EV fleet has offset demand for 143m barrels of oil since the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Another says that the crisis is “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”.
Meanwhile, amid slowing domestic sales, Chinese carmakers’ exports of NEVs more than doubled [in 2026 to date / in September] from a year earlier.
NEV record
A record two out of every three cars sold in September in China were NEVs, according to CPCA data, as shown in the figure below.
(NEVs predominantly include battery electric vehicles – BEVs – and plug-in hybrids – PHEVs. BEVs only run on electricity, whereas PHEVs also have a combustion engine.)
This marks a rapid rise for NEVs from just 6% of new car sales in 2020 up to 58% in 2026 to date – and a record 67% in the month of September.
This year, NEVs’ share of sales has also bounced back from a low of 39% in January, after the full purchase tax exemption that had been in place for more than a decade came to an end in December 2025.
The gain in NEV share in 2026 has come amid a slowdown across the wider domestic passenger-car market, which has hit sales of combustion-engine vehicles particularly hard.
This September, passenger-car retail sales across all categories declined, with overall sales volumes falling 28% year-on-year.
The contraction was led by combustion-engine vehicles, which saw sales fall 43% year-on-year in September and 31% in 2026 to date.
However, sales of PHEVs also fell by 36% year-on-year in September and by 26% in 2026 to date. By comparison, BEVs performed better, although sales still declined 8.5% from a year earlier in September and 4% in 2026 to date.
As a result, NEV sales overall fell by 17% in September and 13% in 2026 to date.
While the market changes in 2026 to date were particularly dramatic, they reflect a broad continuation of trends seen over the past decade.
Indeed, sales of combustion-engine cars in China peaked in 2017 and they have been declining ever since, shown in the figure below.
Impact of Hormuz
Part of the reason for the advance of NEVs in 2026, said Chinese technology news outlet OFweek, was petrol cars “giving up market share” as they were outperformed by electric alternatives.
Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the CPCA, cited higher petrol prices as an explanation for September’s weak combustion-car sales, in comments to financial news outlet National Business Daily.
Imports of oil into China in January-September have fallen 15% compared to 2025, equivalent to 470m barrels, as ongoing conflict tightened supply and drove up prices.
China’s passenger-car NEV fleet has displaced 143m barrels of oil so far during the strait of Hormuz crisis, Euan Graham, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief.
EVs “accounted for 12% of the decrease in China’s oil use post-Hormuz”, according to an estimate provided to thinktank the Brookings Institute by an unnamed analyst.
Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, tells Carbon Brief that the strait of Hormuz crisis and higher oil prices are “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”.
She says the “world’s largest oil supply disruption” vindicates China’s early bet on EVs, which was partly driven by concerns about oil-supply security.
NEV demand down
Nevertheless, NEV sales have fallen year-on-year, albeit at a slower rate than overall car sales. The growth in NEV market share has also been decelerating.
Zhang Yichao, a partner at consulting firm AlixPartners, tells Carbon Brief that NEVs benefit from government trade-in policies and a “strong pipeline” of new models, particularly those involving innovation.
He says these factors help explain why NEVs sales have fallen at a slower rate to their combustion-car counterparts.