The Uganda Carbon Bureau was registered in April 2006, and is the only full-service carbon finance company in Uganda.
The Bureau provides professional support to project developers, carbon credit buyers, development agencies, financiers and the public to ensure that biodiversity and social impacts are carefully assessed and innovatively treated in projects developed in the voluntary and compliance carbon markets.
The Bureau provides a carbon offset service, based on credits from Ugandan projects, for use by Ugandan companies, organisations, individuals and event managers. This allows us to encourage small local carbon projects by offering to market their credits to local buyers. The Bureau provides information about climate change and the carbon markets to a wide audience in Uganda. Running through all of our work is a 'fair trade' ethos to get the maximum amount of carbon finance down to local project developers to make goods such as improved cookstoves as affordable as possible.
Contact Information
We operate in Uganda, but with links around East Africa. We have a number of national initiatives covering forestry, renewable energy, fuel switch and energy efficiency involving voluntary and compliance carbon standards. We are particularly interested in extending access to the carbon markets to rural communities, and in using this to lower the costs of adopting energy efficiency and new technologies. We have a 6-country East Africa CDM Programme of Activities for suppliers (manufacturers and importers) of improved cookstoves in validation. This is being complemented with a cookstove support facility to bring potential participants in the PoA up to a level where they can be included in the PoA. The PoA is open to any supplier organisation, and stove samples are independently tested and rated by the Makerere University CREEC stove testing facility. The PoA will be in operation in early 2011. Solid donor support is being provided for the establishment of this pioneering PoA.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
Our previous work in the reform of the forestry sector has given us a very good set of insights into the social situation in Uganda and the barriers and the means of encouraging the adoption of new technologies. We are working with partners who are engaged with the very poorest communities in East Africa, and our ethos is to maximise their benefit from carbon finance.
We are particularly interested in new stove technologies, 'green' charcoal and bio-fuel briquettes. We believe that the scale of our PoA will support a quantum change in the adoption of improved cookstoves throughout the region, and that the provision of carbon finance revenues that are not siphoned off via broker margins will encourage a rapid expansion in the number of supplier organisations, and will increase the quality of stoves and their accessibility.
We are not involved in this area yet.
We are interested in the social benefit from the adoption of improved cooking appliances and clean renewable energy lighting systems. We are planning a number of innovative monitoring techniques to ensure the credibility of the cookstoves poA.
Relevant Publications or Studies
Our CDM registration documents are about to be uplifted to the CDM website for global comment. We are dedicated to sharing lessons from this pioneering CDM PoA with other like-minded organisations.
Our Contribution to the Partnership
We believe that we can be a source of case study experiences from East Africa that link technology and innovative forms of funding, based upon a fair trade retention of the bulk of carbon finance earnings by the supplier organisations.
