Datong River Tianwanggou Hydropower Station

Audit Analysis

The Datong River Tianwanggou Hydropower Station is a VCS-registered avoidance project displacing grid electricity, with VVB-confirmed additionality and no reported reversal events. However, the project record is undermined by seven inter-document contradictions (including conflicting baseline methods, leakage justifications, and crediting periods), three material findings with required corrective actions, a grid emission factor frozen at 2005 values, and low extraction confidence across the document set. The pro-rata delivery ratio of approximately 109% is reasonable, but the cumulative documentation and consistency issues limit confidence in the credit claims.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Seven contradictions across documents, including conflicting baseline methods (project-specific vs. jurisdictional), contradictory leakage justifications ('not addressed' vs. 'deemed negligible'), and two different crediting periods (2008–2018 vs. 2010–2020)
• ⚠Three material findings in the 2021 verification report: generation unit type inconsistent with the PDD, an unresolved crediting-period contradiction between sections A.2 and C.2.2, and missing GPS coordinates for the powerhouse and dam
• ⚠Grid emission factor of 0.8498 tCO2/MWh is anchored to 2005 data, making it 13 years old by the end of the 2018 monitoring period
• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% with contradictory justifications across verification reports (2012: 'deemed negligible'; 2021: 'not addressed')

Credit Vintages