Argentina - Uganda

Simoshi has Argentinian roots, and our founder Virginia Echavarria managed to make a presentation to secondary children in two schools in Buenos Aires during her visit last week. It was a great opportunity to introduce the concept of carbon financing to the students attending St. Catherine’s Moorlands School and The Global School. Children learned how institutional improved cook stoves can positively contribute to global warming and climate change, and had many interesting questions about the schools and life in general in Uganda. This is our humble contribution to education and an opportunity to speak about the wonderful Uganda.

May Gets Started

The month of May commenced around the world with Muslim celebrations, together with Workers Day. It was a day of rest and joy for many, while here at Simoshi we are extra happy to share we also kick-off the month with a new school joining our Project Activity “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda”.

The government aided primary school Queen of Peace decided to change their old cooking stoves during the holiday period to start the new school term II on the 9th of May with the Ugastove institutional improved cook stoves (IICS). Five IICS of different capacities were deployed to cater for school boarding population of 700 children enrolled.

Term I Comes to an End

Schools are officially closing their first term tomorrow. It has been a relief to see children back in class without any interruption. It was such a joy to see Head Teachers, school Directors, teachers and non-teaching staff all celebrating a successful first term coming to an end.

It is now a well deserved time to rest, until the second term begins on Monday 9th of May. Three weeks of holidays await for children who had to attend a longer than usual first school term, as the calendar has been stretched by the Ministry of Education and Sports, to catch up for the lost time during the pandemic.

For us at Simoshi, we will be busy taking advantage of closed kitchens, to make all the necessary free repairs and maintenance to the institutional improved cook stoves.

New Issuance of Carbon Credits

Great news to share as we had achieved our third successful carbon credit issuance with the Gold Standard yesterday.

Although this time around the volume is low, with 1,647 Verified Emission Reductions achieved (VERs), we are still grateful for having continuously supported our participating schools in Uganda as they move away from using the traditional 3-stone fires to energy efficient cook stoves (IICS) in their kitchens.

It is a big achievement, because despite the Covid-19 pandemic, with Uganda having the longest 2-year period of schools’ closure, we still managed to continue with our operations. And this is clearly reflected on the amount of VERs issued for the monitoring period of activities taking place from 20/03/2020 until 30/09/2021.

We are still happy and working hard on our fourth verification exercise right now. If schools continue to operate normally, we will be expecting 10,000 VERs at this same time in 2023. So looking forward to what’s awaiting for us around the corner!

Wood Splitter

Schools face tremendous challenges when purchasing firewood. As we thrived with our participating schools in achieving their firewood savings with their new IICS, we realised these savings could also be increased if schools could be educated to raise their quality standards: that is the firewood they purchase.

Simoshi is a service provider. Its strong relationships of trust built with schools through monitoring, on-going staff training and free annual IICS maintenance, are the added on value and innovative project pillars necessary for the behavioural transition to happen. The cooking sector currently educates the audience with simple messages, and has focused to date on consumer based financing, economic fuel savings and technology efficiency as the sole motivators for change. Nevertheless, service production and consumption take place simultaneously non-stop as schools expect to achieve firewood reductions not only at the start when they purchase the IICS, but also throughout its lifetime.

The supply of firewood is entirely made in the informal sector. It is sold wet, and in very large pieces, usually the whole tree trunk is what the school and cooks are left with to handle with their institutional improved cook stoves (IICS). These IICS can accommodate small pieces of wood, and we always train them to ensure the diameter is not bigger than that of your wrist. Nevertheless, schools do not have the correct equipment to split the wood into small pieces, and are left with a simple axe to do the best they can.

This is why we designed the wood splitter with our friend and Engineer Markus Laugner. The cooks don’t need to struggle and suffer when chopping firewood. With the use of this device together with a heavy duty hammer, the work is done faster and much easier, with less force and stress, while smaller sizes can be achieved.

Our Biggest Deployed So Far

Over the weekend we had a new secondary school joining our Project Activity “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda”. The school currently cooks for over 1,000 boarding students, and had decided to get started with their firewood savings by joining Simoshi.

We had to hire a crane to offload the massive 600 litres capacity institutional improved cook stove (IICS) that will be used for preparing the school’s daily beans. Here below we share some of the pictures of the collective efforts and manpower to get the IICS firmly installed in the school kitchen.

Breaking Doors

Our institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) can accommodate saucepans from 30 litres to 500 litres capacity. You can imagine a truck tyre, that is how big these IICS can be! Because we provide free IICS annual maintenance to all during a 5 year period, we opted for the portable rocket model. This allows for an easier and more affordable repair model, as parts of the stove can be easily removed, repaired and replaced.

Nevertheless, this benefit can sometimes become a headache when making a new IICS installation. Stoves are fully manufactured and assembled at the Ugastove factory. That means that with the largest IICS models - which can be over 1 meter wide - schools’ kitchen buildings sometimes need some demolition on their door frames and walls to give way. Although the pictures below show a destructive and complicated situation, the breaking and fixing of the wall/doorway is done during the same day when the IICS are delivered and installed.

During the kitchen assessment and prior to the IICS delivery, we at Simoshi ensure to have a clear picture of all the kitchen infrastructure situation before the IICS order is even placed, to ensure a smooth transition to the schools’ new cooking practices.

Bigger Populations, Bigger Saucepans

Following our last post on how classrooms are now experiencing an even larger number of students than former years due to the Covid-19 pandemic and closure for almost 2 years, school kitchens are also being impacted by this population rise.

Now that schools are open again, those who managed to survive and opened the doors to students once again, are in desperate need of new institutional improved cook stoves (IICS), and larger saucepans, to accommodate daily food preparation. We at Simoshi are currently busy organising the IICS manufacturing, deliveries and training of kitchen staff. So far, since the beginning of 2022, six new schools have already joined our Project Activity, while several existing schools operating with us since 2016, have ordered for extra larger IICS as they had grown in population by an average of 20%.

Under the Mango Tree

Crowded classrooms was not something new to experience in Ugandan schools before the pandemic crises. Classrooms that were crowded before the pandemic are now struggling to accommodate more students who have entered the system while schools were closed.

As we closely monitor the schools’ kitchens, the pictures here below are a real example that while out of school, many students worked to support their families, so they have not progressed. There was no distance/on-line learning for the majority. At the same time, others have started school, this means that classrooms that were at capacity before the pandemic are now be crowded.

It is wonderful to see schools back to life and amazing to have a concentrated outdoor classroom attentively following the teacher under the shade of a mango tree. No choice, class must go on!

This Job Needs Muscles

There is a traditional dish served at schools in Uganda called “posho”. This is basically maize flour, what Italians know as “polenta”. White in colour. it is boiled in water and served with beans.

In a school with 700 hundred children and above, you can imagine the size of the saucepan to cook the posho. At Wampeewo Ntakke Secondary School, with 2,000 children enrolled, this cooking job is not easy with a saucepan of 500 litres capacity!

Only men can handle such size, and as you can see from the pictures below, the cooking task becomes even harder when the school is using traditional 3-stone fires. The heat, the danger of the flames escaping on all sides, and the strength that is needed when stirring makes the work hard.

Thankfully, the school is moving to using institutional improved cook stoves for all of their meals, so stay tuned as we finalise with the installation in their new kitchen!

Schools Reopen After Almost Two Years

The year 2022 has started with more excitement that the usual, as children finally go back to school. All grades back in the classroom! After one of the world’s longest school closures, authorities warned at least 30% of students may never return. About 15 million students have been affected by the closure, government says.

Simoshi was as excited as the teachers and children to see all the buzz going on in the compounds. Training of the kitchen staff started once again, with spot checks on all the institutional improved cook stoves to ensure all school meals are efficiently prepared.

We are closely monitoring and hoping the Omicron third wave of the pandemic will not affect the full opening of the economy this time.

Last Event Of The Year

The Green Finance Dialogue Forum 2021 celebrated green SMEs and engaged actors from different sectors to co-create pathways for green financing. This dialogue brought together 130 financiers, policy-makers, enterprise support organisations and green businesses to explore pathways for expanding access to finance and capacity building for green SMEs across sectors.

Simoshi said “present” and attended all sessions and panel discussions, hosted by UGEFA and funded by the European Union, which took place at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala on the 9th of December. We also had the opportunity to promote the use of improved cook stoves between the attendants, as we continue to support the global efforts in the transition of 2.6 billion existing people in their transition to clean cooking.

Carbon Credits Sold Out

Since our first issuance of Gold Standard Certified Emission Reductions back in November 2019, followed by a second one in February 2020, all carbon credit stock has been sold through the UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now platform. This was possible thanks to the voluntary contribution and awareness on climate change of those individuals and companies wanting to neutralise their carbon emissions. This has made a huge impact in making all of Simoshi’s activities possible, as we continue to hand hold the schools when making the transition to using the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS).

We installed the first IICS back in March 2016, and up to date, we are still repairing/maintaining all those same IICS for free to all of our participating schools, monitoring and training their kitchen staff, ensuring the firewood reductions are achieved as when we first deployed the stoves.

By changing their traditional cooking practices with the use of an IICS, an average school with 700 children reduces their firewood consumption by half, translating into 90 tons of carbon dioxide not released into the atmosphere every year. Today over 80 schools are included under our Project Activity, and we will continue to work with the same enthusiasm to make sure more schools join this 2022 as schools get ready to reopen their doors for children to attend.

We are also finalising our third verification exercise, and expect the third issuance of carbon credits by February 2022. So stay tuned for our next updates as we embrace the New Year with high expectations and endless hope!

Understanding The Process

Carbon financing has certainly helped Simoshi roll-out its activities with schools, and support for the past 5 years all school kitchens and their transition to utilising institutional improved cook stoves, to achieve the minimum requirement of 50% firewood savings. And that is just one of the many benefits provided to them, the children and staff.

That is why we continuously receive other organisations from different sectors looking for advice and information on how to enter the carbon markets. The process is not simple, can become extremely technical and confusing (especially with the recent rule changes with the post-Paris era), but we always encourage others to take time to look into the voluntary certification as an important income revenue to support project activities in a sustainable way.

This month we met with Love Binti International, an association that supports women in Uganda by improving sanitation, upgrading infrastructure, providing vocational training support, improving their menstrual health, and defending their right to education.

Third Verification Exercise Started

The Designated Operational Entity (or UN auditor) has been hired and the finalised Monitoring Report was already submitted for our third consequtive verification exercise. This time around, under the Article 6 policy uncertainties and future of the Clean Development Mechanism still unknown, we will be only performing a verification with the Gold Standard (GS).

The Performance Review with the GS has already been booked and paid, and their work will also get started soon on the 20th of December. If all goes smoothly, the third batch of GS Verified Emission Reductions (VERs or carbon credits) will be available for sale in March 2022.

It Was Possible Because Everyone Collaborated

When Simoshi first issued it’s first batch of carbon dioxide emission reductions in November 2019, we had a big concern as to where we could find potential buyers. We had no former experience in the trading of carbon credits. The market had always been very negative with the pricing trends, the attitude of corporates offsetting their carbon footprint, while the uncertainty of the future of the Paris Agreement made things look gloomy.

As we write this post, Simoshi has gone through two verifications and the total issuance came down to 12,407 carbon credits. Today, there are only 85 carbon credits left and still available on the Climate Neutral Now platform. This on-line platform has been a fantastic space to promote our activities, a 100% free service provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The Covid-19 pandemic has not made things easy, and although the third verification is currently underway, a small issuance is expected and a consequence of schools being closed for most of the past two years. If schools are closed, no institutional improved cook stoves are being used to prepare the children’s meals.

Schools will not re-open until January 2022, which was announced during the last presidential address. While we await for vaccination to progress within teachers and school support staff, we are alway grateful for what we have achieved to date. Because every single sale of carbon credits has made the transition of 3-stone fires to energy efficient cook stoves a reality, and the support of the cooking upgrade in schools is still on-going since we first started back in 2016.

Improve, Everyone Always Benefits

Improve, improve, improve! There is always room for improvement, and that is what here at Simoshi we are always pursuing with all of our partners and colleagues at work. Some experiences are shared with our recent meeting with Uganda Stove Manufacturers Limited (Ugastove). Rehema, Ugastove’s CEO, was at our office last week to go through some further changes we are implementing to the design of the chimney connectors.

You can see some corroded connectors on the pictures posted here below. The connectors are the conduits in the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) that (i) help to channel the smoke from the firewood combustion outside through the chimney pipe, and (ii) make sure the IICS is secured and firmly placed through the cemented wall.

Unfortunately we find that some providers of the metal sheets Ugastove uses to build the connectors had cheated on the quality of the material and in the long term, the heat from the firewood combustion combined with the rain, produce an accelerated rusting that ends up in corroded material.

We quarterly meet with Ugastove to go through quality assurance training sessions and quality control, to ensure all IICS delivered to schools can excel the required standards, not only when the product is new, but also throughout its lifetime. As you can see in this case with the connectors, these IICS have been operating since 2016, so monitoring quality standards is an exercise that has to be performed continuously.

If you want to provide an excellent service, you have to accept you can always improve, improve, improve!

Bad Shape

Sometimes we can find ugly surprises in a school kitchen where the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) have not been handled appropriately. Although we continuously train the school kitchen staff on how to best handle their IICS, things can suddenly go wrong. This is the case of Kitebi Primary School.

One of their IICS had started to corroded as a result of overfilling the saucepan. Because this IICS is used for cooking the beans, water with salt corrodes the metal body as water is spilled all over during boiling point.

It does not matter what degree of maintenance is needed, all schools receive free annual IICS maintenance for a 6-year period under the Project Activity registered with the Clean Development Mechanism and the Gold Standard. To avoid incurring in higher costs, we continuously train the IICS cooks and users to ensure we minimise the expenses incurred when making the repairs. This will benefit everyone involved, from the school management (IICS continue to save firewood), the cooks who handle a gsafe IICS and avoid injuries and Simoshi that can continue to support the school while generating the maximum amount of CO2 reductions.

10 Reasons Why Carbon Credits are Like Ice Creams

Great article about Voluntary #CarbonMarkets and #CarbonCredits by Vikram Widge, Senior Advisor of Climate Policy Initiative.

After lying relatively dormant for the better part of the last decade, demand for voluntary carbon offsets has seen a sharp uptake since 2019, driven by the growing number of private entities that are starting to operationalize their net-zero pledges and seeking to neutralize the non-abated balance of their emissions.

Voluntary carbon offsets should not and cannot be the leading tactic for zeroing out private sector emissions. Emphasis must be placed on reducing emissions as much as possible. However, offsets play an important transition role in neutralizing emissions that are more difficult to abate, while also serving as an important funding mechanism to protect natural capital. We could think of them as a reward, like ice cream is when you eat your veggies.

As we all work to build a robust, ethical carbon offset market at scale to support a sustained transition to net-zero, maybe keeping this ice cream analogy in mind will make the effort, and the result, all the more satisfying.

A Recipe For Cough

This video was shot at Wampeewo Ntakke Secondary School last Sunday. As we visited the school to make the final measurements for the new institutional improved cook stoves we will be installing in their new kitchen, Annet, the school cook, shared with us the recipe for the cough syrup she was preparing for her son in her traditional 3-stone fire.

Check on the video below to find out which three different tree leaves she boils for her magic potion!