Avoidance of Methane Emissions at Organic Compost Soil Amendment Facility

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard methane-avoidance composting project with a confirmed investment additionality test and FPIC, but significant concerns around a project-specific modeled baseline, unaddressed permanence risk, and a verified emission reduction that is only about 27% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation. Multiple calculation errors in the original submissions were caught and corrected by the VVB, but the overall data quality and claim robustness remain moderate.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Verified ERR of 5,352 tCO2e for the 2015 monitoring period is only ~27% of the pro-rata expectation (~20,140 tCO2e) derived from the PDD lifetime estimate of 201,395 tCO2e over a 10-year crediting period, indicating a major under-delivery relative to the ex-ante baseline.
• ⚠Reversal events are explicitly 'not addressed' in the verification report and no buffer pool percentage is stated, leaving permanence risk unquantified for a methane-avoidance project.
• ⚠Six material findings in the verification report reveal systematic calculation errors (fixed 90/10 ratio applied instead of actual weights, unsubstantiated baseline transportation emissions, non-conservative N2O emission factors), suggesting the original project documentation was not rigorously prepared.
• ⚠Leakage treatment is contradictory: the verification report (2017) states leakage was 'deemed negligible' with a 0% deduction, while the 2013 appendix indicates leakage was 'not addressed' at all.

Credit Vintages