Community Carbon Efficient Cooking Programme VPA-9

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard cooking-stove energy-efficiency project in Mozambique with a verified combined additionality test and recent baseline reassessment, but undermined by a high volume of corrective actions, multiple cross-document contradictions in ERR figures and crediting periods, and the absence of a buffer pool. The project's core methodology is sound, yet data-quality issues and an unresolved ex-ante estimation error create meaningful over-crediting and reliability concerns.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠13+ corrective actions required across verification and monitoring reports, including errors in ER calculation equations, sample-size methodology, and SDG reporting
• ⚠Ex-ante ER estimation error identified: cumulative stove distribution was not applied for years 2–5, leading to understated annual reductions
• ⚠No buffer pool percentage stated in any available document, leaving permanence risk unmitigated
• ⚠Crediting period contradicts across documents: 15-year period (2022–2037) in the monitoring report vs. 5-year period (2026–2030) in the validation report
• ⚠Total ERR claimed of 70,217 (verification report) vs. 188,856 (appendix) — a 2.7× discrepancy that may reflect VPA-level vs. programme-level scope but is unresolved

Credit Vintages