Efficient Cookstoves in Bahia II - Santo Amaro

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard cookstove project in Bahia, Brazil, with a combined additionality test and local-field FNRB, but significant gaps in permanence safeguards (no buffer pool), a thin leakage justification, and a project-specific baseline with no recorded reassessment. The project consistently under-delivered relative to PDD expectations (50–68% of projected reductions), which is conservative for claim safety but signals weak planning and monitoring. Multiple data contradictions across monitoring reports are largely explainable by different reporting periods, but the overall evidence base shows moderate reliability concerns.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠No buffer pool or permanence safeguard is stated in any available document, leaving no safety margin against stove failure or disuse
• ⚠Leakage deduction is 0% with only a 'deemed negligible' justification, which is thin for a project where displaced fuel purchases or additional wood harvesting are plausible
• ⚠Usage rate assumed in the PDD (0.97) is 13 percentage points higher than the verified rate (0.84), indicating optimistic baseline assumptions
• ⚠Actual emissions reductions were only 50% of expected for the monitoring period and 68% of the expected average annual ER, reflecting a major gap between planned and delivered stoves (2,150 vs 3,300)
• ⚠Four corrective actions remain open, including a required physical site visit and Water Boiling Test results for the next verification cycle

Credit Vintages