The business will launch in Nigeria, partnering with local firms with proven track records of successfully delivering high-quality projects, the company said.

“This initiative will seek to mobilize capital from funding partners to the voluntary carbon market in support of the effort of the Nigerian government toward a more equitable energy transition for Africa,” Vitol said in a news release.

The joint venture’s first investment will be in a household energy efficiency program that includes clean cooking and water filtration devices. The initial scope of the project is to deploy up to 200,000 devices of each, Vitol said.

The company estimates that about 1 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa rely on wood and charcoal for daily cooking and water purification, a major cause of the nearly 10 million acres of annual deforestation and degradation across the continent.

Michael Curran, head of environmental products at Vitol, said the projects delivered through CarbonVista will focus on ensuring social benefits alongside the highest offsetting standards.

This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
–Reporting by Abdul Latheef, alatheef@opisnet.com; Editing by Barbara Chuck, bchuck@opisnet.com