Complexities and challenges in the emerging cookstove carbon market in India

•A number of challenges for the dissemination of improved cookstoves exist.•Carbon finance is an opportunity to address financial barriers in dissemination.•Different strategies for applying carbon finance were identified in India.•Despite uncertainties many organizations valued the potential of carbon finance.•It has enabled new actors to enter the market and expanded the scale of the market.

"Improved" cooking technologies have been generally understood to be a "win–win" development intervention creating both environmental and development benefits. Yet dissemination of improved cooking technologies has faced many challenges. Carbon finance provides an opportunity to address some of the financial barriers in dissemination initiatives. However, the impacts of carbon finance on cookstove activities are not fully understood. Using India as a case study, this research examines how carbon financing is impacting cookstove dissemination efforts. Specifically this study identifies which actors in the Indian cookstove arena are engaged in carbon financed initiatives and how this is changing their business models and for those not applying for carbon finance, what their rational for this choice is. Results based on 19 semi-structured interviews provide an overview of different organizational approaches employed, perceptions around carbon financing, and identification of the opportunities, challenges and unknowns surrounding the use of carbon finance for cookstove dissemination.