GS1247 VPA 70 Zoba Debub Community Boreholes

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard borehole project in Eritrea displaces fuel use for 600+ households across six villages, with VVB-verified additionality and no reversal events. However, the absence of a buffer pool, a 0% leakage deduction (contradicted by a 5% figure in the PDD), a project-specific baseline, and a claimed lifetime ER figure (79,172 tCO₂) that appears substantially higher than the per-year generation rate (~3,272 tCO₂/yr) raise meaningful concerns about over-crediting risk and permanence protection. Numerous open corrective actions and a low extraction confidence further temper confidence in the data.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠No buffer pool or permanence mechanism is stated in any available document, leaving borehole-failure reversal risk unaddressed
• ⚠Leakage deduction was reduced from 5% (PDD, 2023) to 0% (verification report, 2024) with only a 'quantified' justification; the 2023 verification report had not addressed leakage at all
• ⚠The claimed/verified lifetime ER of 79,172 tCO₂ is roughly 24× the per-year emission reduction of ~3,272 tCO₂, suggesting the figure may span multiple crediting periods or be overstated relative to the 5-year crediting window (2025–2030)
• ⚠CAR#5 (open): some households do not meet the methodology's 1 km walking-distance requirement for improved water access, yet their emissions reductions appear to be included
• ⚠min_extraction_confidence is 'low', indicating at least one key document was poorly readable, reducing reliability of the extracted data

Credit Vintages