VCS1860 Solar Cookers China

VCS1860 | Solar Cookers, China is a people-focused Verified Carbon Standard project improving living conditions in the home.

Project Description: VCS1860 | Solar Cookers, China

The project enables approximately 196,000 people to use solar thermal energy as a direct substitute for coal.

The rural area in Zhangye is an underdeveloped region which uses coal for cooking and boiling water.

The local villagers use coal because cutting wood and vegetation is illegal.

Electricity is only used for lighting, straw feeds their animals and the animal wastes fertilise the fields.

Zhangye is one of China’s best regions to use solar energy being located at high altitude with many sunny days.

The project has installed 49,000 solar cookers in households across the region’s remote areas.

The solar cookers are focusing-type solar thermal cookers which require no construction to use.

The project’s total installed capacity is 44.59 MW thermal, with each individual solar cooker rated as 910 W (thermal).

This is a distributed household-scale clean energy project avoiding pollution and other adverse local environmental impacts.

Sustainability Beyond Carbon

There is more to offsets than just carbon.

Each VCS carbon credit is a tonne of verified climate benefit, no matter the type of project.

This carbon offset project provides multiple sustainability co-benefits beyond just carbon and helps link your climate response to improved sustainability.

The project serves as a model for other projects and helps stimulate investor interests in solar thermal projects.

It educates and trains households on solar energy technology while giving them clean and reliable cooking energy.

The household’s indoor air quality and living conditions are improved by not burning coal inside.

The use of solar cookers diminishes the risk of fire caused by coal-fired stoves.

Stakeholders from different genders, age groups and education backgrounds expressed support for the project.

They considered that it would help improve local social, economic and environmental development.

Local villagers indicated that solar cookers aren’t easily available locally and that they wouldn’t have gone outside their region to buy one.

The lifetime of solar cooker is at least 10 years during which the solar cookers can maintain its technical specifications.

Want to know more about VCS1860 | Solar Cookers, China?

The project’s design and monitoring, validation and verification reports are publicly available here: https://registry.verra.org/app/projectDetail/VCS/1860