Duzce Aksu Hydro Electricity Power Plant

Audit Analysis

The Duzce Aksu hydro project is a VCS-registered avoidance project with a jurisdictional baseline and VVB-verified investment additionality test, but it is undermined by a significant additionality concern (the plant was operational in 2014 yet not registered until 2020), a reservoir-area error of roughly three orders of magnitude, 16 corrective action requests during verification, and an overall low extraction confidence in the underlying documents. The project delivered roughly 58% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the elapsed monitoring period, which is conservative, but the absence of stated CORSIA/CCP status and the crediting-period contradiction between the PDD and the verification report leave material uncertainty about the credit's integrity.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Project was operational since 2014 but not registered until 2020, raising serious questions about whether carbon finance was genuinely needed for additionality.
• ⚠Reservoir surface area (APJ) was corrected from 708,202 m² to 707 m² (a factor of ~1,000 error) due to a formatting/character-language mistake, indicating a fundamental data-quality failure in the monitoring report.
• ⚠16 Corrective Action Requests were raised and resolved during the 2025 verification, including inconsistencies in electricity generation figures, an incorrect project-type description (identified as wind power), and outdated emission-factor sources.
• ⚠Crediting period is contradictory: the verification report (Oct 2025) states 2014-04-25 to 2024-04-24, while the PDD (Sep 2025) states 2024-04-25 to 2034-04-24, and a material finding flags 'incorrect crediting period selection in the PD.'
• ⚠CORSIA eligibility and CCP status are not stated in any available document, leaving dual-channel or double-claiming risk unassessed.

Credit Vintages