1.Financial benefits to the household:

For developing world residents who subsist on very little income per day, 10-40 cents per day to 30 cents to 1 dollar additional per day gained from selling carbon micro-credits from reducing their personal carbon footprint is a significant & motivating sum to participate.Furthermore, in many such countries denuded of biomass, families spend from 25 - 50 % of their daily income on fuel to cook. This huge daily expense will be reduced, for example, by the usage of efficient wood-stoves and provides more “income” to each family since there is an incentive to stop cooking with expensive kerosene, propane or charcoal.

2.Improved indoor health environment:

Many millions of children in the developing world are exposed to toxic levels of smoke from in-door cooking with biomass and thousands later experience illness as adults from years of forced “passive smoking”. An estimated 1.5 - 2 million people/year in the developing world die prematurely from indoor air pollution, this is the same number as die from malaria every year.

3. Establish the concepts of financial management and installment loans:

This system introduces or further reinforces the profit motive and schools individuals in the value of free markets. Individuals/families in some programs could be given a mobile phone (and efficient stove, for example) on credit and required to re-pay through offsetting their claimed carbon micro credits over a finite period of time.

4. Mobile phone communication channels for distributing information:

Mobile phones used in the project may serve other functions such as for

•  
  • Tele-education of children
  • Dissemination of public-health messages (e.g. upcomingvaccine campaigns and support network for AIDS/HIV sufferers)
  • Timely notification of national emergencies such as typhoons or tsunamis

5. Matching project location and carbon-saving productto carbon credit buyer:

Projects can be custom-tailored to appeal to end-buyers of the offsets. For ex-ample, offsets from a solar cooker project could be pre-sold to a steel mill in the U.K. that has operations in that project host nation, or a hotel chain in East Africa could buy carbon credits from an emissions reduction project located near to a hotel location. Such end-buyers would possibly pay a premium for credits with a known and desired provenance or origin, if this information can be used strategically to generate goodwill in the marketplace. By paying an additional fee, obvious product or logo placement opportunities could be offered to offset buyers, for example, branding a solar cooker in a territory where a market competitor has greater marketshare.

6.Increased usage of mobile phones, mobile banking and related commerce:

•  Both handset manufacturers and cell-phone service providers benefit from a much greater installed base and economies of scale. Once provided with a mobile phone, users will find novel ways to use them in for-profit ventures, besides for the the carbon micro credit project.
• The disposable incomes of the project participants will increase and some of the new wealth will be spent on upgraded cell phones and paid calling time.
• Mobile phone companies in the developing world already have software &hardware that easily allow for commerce based on earning & exchanging cell phone minutes. Examples include, MTN (South Africa), Grameen Phone (Bangladesh), Safricom (Kenya, Tanzania) and China Mobile Limited.
• The growth of cross-border money-transfer schemes through mobile phone networks can be utilised by a growing user base involved in the carbon micro credit project for receiving remittances securely from overseas family members (such as Vodafone/Safaricoms joint venture with Western Union bank).

There are further benefits to the participating households and their surrounding environments, as illustrated when seen through the example of an efficient woodstove project in Kenya.

Environmental Benefits:

• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
• Improvement of indoor air quality
• Reduction of deforestation in critical watershed areas.

Economic Benefits:

• Household income improvement
• Support to both telecom and clean energy technology expansionin Kenya (and the region)

Social Benefits:

• Access to affordable and cleaner energy services
• Freedom of women and children from wood gathering
• Personal empowerment through contribution to improvedglobal and local ecological standards