High-Integrity Carbon Credits. Built for Institutional Buyers.
Hibiscus Clear Sky develops cookstove projects in Ghana and Senegal under Gold Standard methodology, delivering rigorously verified carbon credits for institutional buyers. Our credits are designed to address overcrediting, methodology weakness, and supply quality issues in the voluntary carbon market — with the credibility airlines, traders, and corporate buyers require.
Vision & Mission
Our Vision
A world where African communities thrive through clean cooking — with efficient cookstoves reducing emissions, improving health, and generating high-integrity carbon credits.
Our Mission
To develop our cookstove projects under Gold Standard methodology, delivering conservative, rigorously verified carbon credits — addressing the credibility gap in voluntary carbon markets while creating lasting health and livelihood benefits for local communities.
The Problem
Cookstove Carbon Credits Face a Credibility Crisis
Over the past three years, investigative reporting and academic research have exposed widespread overcrediting across major voluntary carbon standards. For cookstove projects, the implications are material: buyers face reputational risk, regulators are tightening oversight, and trust in the market has weakened. CORSIA-eligible supply remains uncertain, and institutional buyers have fewer credible options.
Overcrediting
Some methodologies have overstated emissions reductions, creating credits that outpace the real impact delivered by households using improved stoves.
Verification Gaps
Weak monitoring, baseline assumptions, and inconsistent field verification can undermine confidence in project results at scale.
CORSIA Uncertainty
Projects targeting airline and institutional demand must navigate evolving CORSIA rules, uncertain eligibility, and a limited supply of high-standard credits.
Gold Standard Trust
Buyers increasingly expect conservative accounting, stronger safeguards, and credible community benefits from these programs.
Our Approach
Conservative by Design
Hibiscus Clear Sky develops its cookstove projects under Gold Standard methodology, applying a deliberately conservative approach at every stage. We do not optimize for maximum issuance. We optimize for accuracy, defensibility, and long-term credibility. Our projects are built to withstand institutional scrutiny — from Gold Standard review to independent academic analysis.
Conservative Baselines
We set baselines using rigorous data on cooking practices, fuel use, and stove adoption, with assumptions designed to err on the side of caution.
Real, Measurable Reductions
We measure reductions against the replacement of open-fire cooking with efficient cookstoves, using primary field data, monitoring systems, and Gold Standard methodology.
Independent Validation
Projects undergo Gold Standard validation and third-party auditing, preserving independence throughout the verification chain.
Methodology
What "Conservative" Means in Practice
Our methodology applies conservative assumptions at every stage. The result is fewer credits per project — but credits that are defensible, durable, and aligned with Gold Standard requirements and long-term buyer expectations.
Geographic Focus
Ghana and Senegal — With a Scalable Africa Strategy
Our initial portfolio is concentrated in Ghana and Senegal — two politically stable, treaty-compliant jurisdictions with strong local partner networks and the infrastructure needed for high-integrity carbon projects. Both provide a strong foundation for programs developed under Gold Standard methodology with measurable climate and community benefits.
Senegal
Active project under development: stakeholder consultation completed in Dakar with the national environmental authority, validation process underway with an accredited third-party auditor, and strong government support for implementation and distribution. Targeting savanna and peri-urban households.
Ghana
Pipeline project in preparation: local partnership and distribution network structure established across six regions, with project design targeting households that still rely on open-fire cooking.
Africa — the Long-Term Thesis
Cookstoves are the primary project type for scaling across Sub-Saharan Africa, offering a practical path to expand access, support adoption, and build a durable regional portfolio at scale.
Local Impact
Community Integration Is Core, Not Optional
Hibiscus Clear Sky treats community benefit as a core project requirement, not a secondary co-benefit. In Ghana and Senegal, our projects are designed to involve local communities directly through training, distribution, and monitoring. This is a structural requirement, not just an ethical preference. Projects without genuine community support face higher permanence risk, monitoring failures, and regulatory scrutiny.
Formal Benefit-Sharing
Our projects are designed so that local communities receive a defined share of carbon revenue, formalized in project documentation as each project advances through validation.
Local Employment
Distribution, training, and monitoring are staffed primarily by local communities, creating sustained employment and building long-term capacity.
Health & Co-Benefits
Cookstoves reduce indoor air pollution and improve health outcomes for women and children, while delivering measurable carbon and SDG-aligned co-benefits.
Commercial Structure
Prepayment Model: Securing Future Supply
Hibiscus Clear Sky enables institutional buyers to secure forward access to verified carbon credits through a structured prepayment model. It is built for buyers that require supply certainty, clear credit quality, and long-term price stability, while providing development capital to preserve methodological integrity.
Buyer Commits Capital
Institutional buyers provide upfront capital against a defined forward supply of credits. Volumes, vintages, and quality specifications are fixed at contract execution.
Project Development
Capital is deployed into project development, monitoring infrastructure, and verification costs, keeping methodology separate from balance-sheet financing.
Credit Delivery
Verified credits are delivered to buyer registries on a defined schedule. Permanence buffers and buffer pool mechanisms protect buyer interests if disruption occurs.
Risk Framework
How We Protect Buyer Interests
Institutional buyers need more than issuance quality assurance — they need structural protection against project failure, regulatory change, and permanence risk. Hibiscus Clear Sky has built its commercial and project architecture to address each exposure directly.
Permanence Buffer
A mandatory 25–30% credit reserve is held in a segregated buffer pool to cover any reversal over the project lifetime.
Jurisdiction Diversification
Exposure across multiple African jurisdictions reduces sovereign and regulatory risk for large forward commitments.
Credit Replacement Provisions
Contracts require replacement of any shortfall with equivalent credits from the buffer pool or alternative projects.
Why Hibiscus Clear Sky
Differentiated by Design, Not by Marketing
The voluntary carbon market has no shortage of projects claiming quality. What differentiates Hibiscus Clear Sky is structural: we have built our portfolio with methodology, governance, and commercial choices designed to address documented market failures — not to maximize credit issuance within existing standards.
vs. Standard Cookstove Projects
Standard cookstove methodologies have been shown to overcredit emissions reductions through aggressive baselines and assumptions. Our conservative baselines are designed to materially reduce that risk.
vs. Large Aggregators
Aggregators bundle projects of variable quality. Hibiscus Clear Sky develops and manages its projects directly, maintaining full methodology control from design through issuance.
vs. Offset Retailers
Retail offset channels are built for volume and convenience, not institutional diligence. Our relationships are direct, project-level transparent, and developed under Gold Standard methodology.
Our Team
Team
Felipe Bolton, Co-Founder & Director
Felipe leads commercial strategy and structuring. He brings 18 years of institutional banking experience at JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank in structured commodity and trade finance, and holds a Global Executive MBA from CEIBS.
Christa Roth, Co-Founder & Technical Director
Christa leads project design and monitoring methodology. She is a specialist in household energy and improved cookstoves with decades of field experience across Sub-Saharan Africa, and oversees Gold Standard methodology implementation in Senegal and Ghana.
Contact
Get in Touch
We work directly with airlines, carbon traders, corporate procurement teams, and institutional investors seeking reliable access to high-integrity African carbon credits. If you're evaluating forward supply, CORSIA eligibility, or a long-term offset strategy, we welcome a conversation.
Airlines & CORSIA
CORSIA-aligned credit specifications and aviation compliance due diligence.
Traders & Intermediaries
Structured supply agreements for trading desks in voluntary and compliance markets.
Corporate Buyers
Project-level transparency and long-term supply certainty for net-zero commitments.
Hibiscus Clear Sky — contact@hibiscusclearsky.com
Hibiscus Clear Sky