Anew - Bluestone Forestry Project

Audit Analysis

The Anew-Bluestone Forestry Project is an ACR-registered improved forest management project in West Virginia with a verified combined additionality test, an 18% buffer pool, and a 40% quantified leakage deduction. However, the project-specific modeled baseline, absence of FPIC and a grievance mechanism, ten material findings requiring correction, and limited safeguards documentation temper an otherwise structurally sound design. The project over-delivered relative to its pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the monitoring period, supporting claim credibility.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Ten material findings were identified in the validation report (Nov 2024), including overlap with other carbon projects (Finite Carbon, Anew Cumberland), species FIA code misallocation, and a pulpwood calculation error — all corrected but indicating data-quality fragility.
• ⚠Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) was not conducted and no grievance mechanism is documented, despite the project affecting forestland in West Virginia.
• ⚠The baseline is project-specific and modeled rather than measured, and the date of last baseline reassessment is not stated in any available document.
• ⚠Five corrective actions were required by the VVB, including removal of overlapping project areas and correction of HWP species allocations, suggesting the initial PDD contained material errors.

Credit Vintages