PwC Can't Sell Koko's Carbon Credits. The Carbon Market Has a Trust Problem.

Eight months after one of Africa's best-known climate startups collapsed, the hardest part of its bankruptcy is not selling stoves, fuel depots, or software. It is selling the carbon credits. Administrators from PwC have spent months trying to turn Koko Networks' remaining carbon inventory into cash for creditors, and buyers will not bite at a price the firm can accept. The inventory sits on the books at 274,992 pounds, about 47 million Kenyan shillings, and the offers received would not generate what PwC calls a meaningful return to the estate.

The figures come from the latest PwC progress report on Koko Networks (UK) Limited, covered this week by Kenyan technology outlets. No sale had been completed as of September 17, 2026, despite discussions with three potential buyers and five brokers. PwC has hired a broker and continues marketing the credits. The arithmetic is brutal either way: unsecured, non-preferential claims against the UK company stand at 127.17 million pounds, roughly 21.8 billion shillings. Even if the carbon inventory sold at full book value, it would cover about 0.22 percent of those claims, before costs or creditor priorities.

The company that ran on carbon

Koko Networks was built on a simple proposition: sell bioethanol cooking fuel cheaper than charcoal or kerosene, and use carbon credits to make the math work. The company's fuel network served more than 1.5 million Kenyan households through automated refuelling points, and revenue from carbon markets was meant to subsidize stoves and fuel for households that could not pay the full commercial price. The Kenyan operations generated the credits; the UK company sold them.

The model broke when the Kenyan government declined to grant the letter of authorization Koko needed to sell credits into international compliance markets, where buyers pay premium prices to meet regulated emissions obligations under frameworks like CORSIA and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Without that authorization, Koko was locked out of the high-value end of the market. The Kenyan operations entered insolvency on February 1, 2026; the UK company followed on February 19. PwC already expects no payout to unsecured creditors.

Why the bids are so low

The first reason is eligibility. Carbon credits are not a commodity; they are claims whose value depends on which markets will accept them. Credits eligible for compliance schemes command premium prices. Everything else trades in the voluntary market, where prices for many categories have been soft. Carbon Streaming, a Canadian credit financier, said this month that CORSIA-tagged credits have been liquid and selling above $8 each, while non-CORSIA-tagged credits in its own portfolio saw limited to no buyer interest over the past year. Koko's credits, barred from compliance channels, sit in exactly the weaker tier.

A carbon credit is only worth what a market will pay for it. Koko's credits are priced like an asset; the market is pricing them like a question.

The second reason is trust. Cookstove credits, once one of the largest categories in the voluntary market, have been battered by methodology disputes. Kenyan outlets reported this week that independent ratings agency BeZero had given Koko's project an overall B rating, signaling a low likelihood that each credit represented a real tonne of avoided emissions, and the lowest possible D grade for its carbon accounting. The dispute centers on one assumption: how much of the wood displaced by Koko's ethanol would have come from non-renewable sources. Koko claimed 93 percent; updated UN tools and city-level data for Nairobi reportedly put the realistic figure nearer 29 to 38 percent. That single assumption more than doubled the credits claimed.

What the fire sale says about carbon markets

PwC's predicament is the market in miniature. For years, voluntary carbon markets ran on a simple premise: a tonne avoided is a tonne avoided, and a certificate could turn it into money. That premise has been replaced by a harder one. Buyers now demand proof, and governments decide who gets to sell. Credits backed by durable removal with tight measurement, monitoring, and verification trade in one lane; legacy avoidance credits with contested baselines trade in another. Koko's credits were born in the older lane, and they are being priced accordingly.

The deeper lesson is about business models, and it matters well beyond Nairobi. Koko's collapse is a cautionary tale for any climate startup that treats carbon revenue as dependable income. Credit prices swing with policy decisions that founders do not control: authorizations can be withheld, methodologies can be rewritten, and demand can migrate to stricter categories almost overnight. The liquidators' filing even records physical assets such as company laptops fetching about 1,231 pounds after an earlier valuation of 8,419, which says something about how thoroughly the estate has melted.

The credits will probably sell eventually, at whatever price the market settles on. That price will be a verdict, not just on one company's paper, but on an entire era of carbon finance: the era when avoiding a tonne of emissions on a spreadsheet was enough to finance a revolution in how more than a million households cook dinner. Carbon markets can still work. But this sale shows they only work where the tonnage is real, the authorization is certain, and the buyer believes both.