Mexico Market Assessment Intervention Options
Top government priorities such as eliminating extreme poverty, and reducing deforestation and carbon emissions have been the major drivers for cookstove programs in Mexico in recent years. Due to the country’s recent economic growth, funding has not been a limiting factor for cookstove programs and most improved cookstoves distributed have been fully subsidized. Households living in marginal or very marginal conditions in small communities -mostly in rural areas- are the main consumers of fire wood for cooking, including 95% of indigenous communities. Even when electricity and gas are available, these communities cannot afford it, so improved biomass stoves are the only alternative for them. Mexican cooking habits require that any stove solution has at minimum an iron skillet (called “comal”), but a single stove solution is not possible since the diversity of cooking traditions due to large ethnic, climate and topology differences requires stove adaptations by region. Although many organizations have pursued improved cookstoves initiatives in Mexico and several models have been developed and installed across the country, in total they have only addressed about 10% of the potential market, so there is an opportunity to coordinate efforts to address the remaining 90% in a quicker more efficient way -this includes the need for an official standards, testing and accreditation organization for stove designs, stove manufacturers and stove builders. While there are three carbon cookstove programs in progress both in the CDM and voluntary market pending registration or validation for 2012, all focused on the long-term use of the stoves, coordination between the government and carbon credit developers will be critical to the further development of this high potential carbon market to avoid falling under “additionality” rule in future programs.
