GS1309 Low cost irrigation devices programme in India-VPA 03

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard irrigation-device project in India has a well-structured verification by Lloyd's Register and a combined additionality test, but suffers from a severe over-crediting signal: the verified emissions reductions for roughly 2.2 years of a 10-year crediting period (148,822 tCO₂e) already exceed the entire lifetime ex-ante estimate (103,009 tCO₂e) by 44%. Multiple data-quality issues were flagged and corrected during verification, and several key parameters (buffer pool, verified usage rate, FPIC) remain unconfirmed, leaving material uncertainty about the robustness of the credit claims.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Verified ERs of 148,822 tCO₂e for the 2011–2013 monitoring period exceed the 10-year lifetime ex-ante estimate of 103,009 tCO₂e, representing roughly 670% of the pro-rata expectation for the elapsed period — a strong indicator of over-crediting or an unreliable ex-ante baseline.
• ⚠Three Corrective Action Requests (inconsistent crediting-period dates, monitoring-data discrepancies for 10 users, and an incorrect diesel emission factor) were raised during verification, indicating material errors in the original submission.
• ⚠Leakage treatment is contradictory: the verification report (July 2014) records a 'deemed negligible' justification for the 0% deduction, while the monitoring report (May 2014) does not address leakage at all.

Credit Vintages Exhausted