Bethlehem Hydroelectric project

Audit Analysis

The Bethlehem Hydroelectric project is a small-scale (2.4+3.4 MW) CDM hydro project in South Africa with a VVB-confirmed barrier additionality test and an appropriate grid-based baseline. However, the verification process surfaced ten material findings—including a ~25% overstatement of design capacity and inclusion of non-functional diesel generators in the monitoring plan—indicating meaningful data-integrity issues that were corrected but erode confidence in the original PDD. The project delivered approximately 115% of the pro-rata PDD expectation for the elapsed monitoring period, with no evidence of over-crediting.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Design capacity was initially overstated (3+4 MW vs. corrected 2.4+3.4 MW) due to a power-factor calculation error, inflating the original PDD ERR estimate
• ⚠Non-functional backup diesel generators were included in the project sites and monitoring plan before being removed during verification
• ⚠Baseline method is described inconsistently across documents: the validation report (2016) calls it jurisdictional while the monitoring report (2020) labels it project-specific
• ⚠No buffer pool percentage is stated in any available document, leaving permanence risk unquantified
• ⚠Grid emission factor is from 2013 and no updated value is referenced in the monitoring report

Credit Vintages