Biogas project, Uttarakhand, India

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard biogas project in Uttarakhand displacing wood-based thermal energy, with VVB-confirmed combined additionality and no reversal events, but weakened by a 0% leakage deduction justified only as 'deemed negligible,' a 10× discrepancy in the fuel net replacement baseline value across documents, and CORSIA eligibility creating dual-channel risk. The project is in its second crediting period (2024–2029) with a recent 2025 verification, yet the verified ERR figure is absent from the extracted record.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% justified only as 'deemed negligible' in a household biogas project where reversion to wood is a realistic risk
• ⚠Fuel net replacement baseline value differs by a factor of 10 between the verification report (86.48) and the 2020 monitoring report (0.8648), with no unit clarification in either document
• ⚠CORSIA eligibility is confirmed while CCP status is not mentioned, creating potential dual-channel credit use
• ⚠Total ERR claimed in the PDD (24,346) is lower than the figure in the 2023 monitoring report (28,180), an unusual inversion that is unexplained
• ⚠FPIC status is contradictory: the PDD (June 2023) records it as not conducted, while the verification report (September 2023) records it as conducted

Credit Vintages