GS11935 GS11934 RVPA-13 Promoting sustainable use of biomass energy resources in targeted communities

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard cookstove project in Nepal with VVB-confirmed additionality and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but undermined by a 100% usage-rate assumption, a project-specific baseline with no stated reassessment, no buffer pool, and a roughly 9× over-delivery of verified emissions reductions relative to the pro-rata ex-ante expectation. Multiple corrective actions and contradictions across documents further erode confidence in the data quality.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Verified ERR of 87,941 is approximately 919% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation (47,855 lifetime estimate ÷ 5-year crediting period × 1-year monitoring period ≈ 9,571), indicating a very large over-delivery that warrants scrutiny of the ex-ante estimate or the verified figure.
• ⚠Usage rate assumed and verified at 100%, which is an extremely aggressive assumption for household cookstove adoption and use in rural Nepal; the PDD lists a value of 1.0, creating a unit or interpretation ambiguity.
• ⚠No buffer pool is stated in any available document, leaving no financial or credit-based protection against potential reversal (e.g., stove replacement or abandonment).
• ⚠FPIC status is contradictory: the earlier validation report (Nov 2023) records it as conducted, while the later validation report (Sep 2024) records it as not conducted.
• ⚠Seven corrective action requests and six forward action requests were raised during verification, including issues with leakage calculation transparency, non-conservative vintage dating, and SDG reporting errors.

Credit Vintages