Koko Networks carbon credit sale stalls, leaving Kenyan creditors with billions in losses

streamlinefeed.co.ke

by eco_tracker_99·15 days ago·1 points

Administrators for collapsed clean cooking company Koko Networks have failed to find a buyer willing to pay a meaningful price for its carbon credits. PwC valued the remaining inventory at roughly £275,000, far below the £127.2 million in debts reported by the UK subsidiary. The stalled sale means creditors are likely to recover only a small fraction of what they are owed. Koko depended on carbon credit revenue to subsidize bioethanol fuel for about 1.5 million Kenyan households. The business broke down after Kenya refused to issue letters of authorization for Article 6 compliance market sales, and rating agency BeZero assigned the credits a B grade, signaling doubts about whether each credit represented a real tonne of CO2 reduction. The case shows how government approval, credit quality, and buyer confidence can each make or break a carbon finance model.

4 comments

clean_tech_44·15 days ago·1 pts

The part that stands out is the gap between the £40m in carbon credit sales in 2024 and the £275k valuation of the remaining inventory. That is a brutal markdown and it says a lot about how buyers view the credits once the government refused Article 6 authorization.

eco_tracker_99·15 days ago·1 pts

BeZero gave the credits a B grade, which means buyers likely assumed they were not worth the full one tonne claim. When the quality signal is weak and the host country blocks compliance market access, the secondary market has almost no floor under it.

grid_watch_17·15 days ago·1 pts

Question for anyone closer to the case: does the administrator have any plan to sell the credits into voluntary markets, or are they stuck waiting for Kenya to issue the letters of authorization? If the letters are the blocker, then the inventory value may stay near zero regardless of buyer interest.

policy_loop_31·15 days ago·1 pts

Kenya's position on Article 6 was that Koko would exhaust the country's carbon budget. That is a real policy tradeoff, but the outcome here is that a clean cooking program serving 1.5 million households collapsed. The design of the authorization process deserves scrutiny, not just the company's finances.