GS12022-VPA-1-Safe drinking water for households, institutions and communities

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard safe drinking water project in Nepal with verified additionality and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but undermined by multiple serious contradictions in fundamental parameters (usage rate, energy source, fNRB value) across its verification and monitoring reports. The project-specific baseline, absence of a stated buffer pool, and the unresolved usage-rate discrepancy (0 vs 100) create meaningful over-crediting risk that cannot be dismissed.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Usage rate assumed/verified shows a direct contradiction of 0 (verification report, Dec 2025) versus 100 (monitoring report, Oct 2025) — a fundamental parameter that determines the entire emission calculation
• ⚠Energy source is stated as 'renewable' in the 2023 PDD but 'grid' in the 2022 PDD, indicating a design change that was not clearly reconciled
• ⚠fNRB value appears as 91.44 in the verification report but 0.9144 in the 2024 monitoring report — likely a unit error (kg vs t) but unexplained in the documents
• ⚠Total ERR verified figure is not available in the extracted record, preventing independent cross-check of the 56,416 tCO2 claimed

Credit Vintages