Fair Climate Programme for Sustainable Household Energy (PoA): Bachat - Karnataka, India (VPA 6)

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard cookstove efficiency project in Karnataka with a VVB-confirmed combined additionality test and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but significantly undermined by a verified usage rate (0.51) that is only 57% of the design assumption (0.9), resulting in delivery of roughly 24% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation. Twelve material findings and twelve corrective actions, along with six cross-document contradictions, indicate substantial documentation and data-quality weaknesses that reduce confidence in the project's MRV robustness.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Verified usage rate of 0.5131 is only 57% of the 0.9 assumed in the PDD, causing the project to deliver approximately 24% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation (660 vs ~2,760 tCO2e for the 17-month monitoring period)
• ⚠Twelve corrective actions and twelve material findings reported in the verification report, including inconsistent stove efficiency values between the PoA and VPA design documents and a monitoring survey conducted after the monitoring period end date
• ⚠No buffer pool percentage stated in any available document, leaving permanence risk unquantified
• ⚠Six contradictions across documents, including a 15-fold gap in total ERR figures (660 vs 9,749 tCO2e) and a usage-rate-verified discrepancy of 0.51 vs 0.99 between two monitoring reports

Credit Vintages Exhausted