GS1340 - Efficient cookstoves in Burkina Faso – tiipaalga F3PA cookstoves in Center-South Protected Areas - VPA-21

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard cookstove project in Burkina Faso with VVB-verified additionality, a quantified 5% leakage deduction, and no reported reversal events, but undermined by a project-specific baseline, ten open corrective actions, a 33% upward revision of verified ERs between two verification reports six weeks apart, and a verified figure roughly 6.4× the pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the monitoring period. The combination of MRV inconsistencies, a substituted site visit, and an ongoing second-round audit leaves meaningful residual risk on both the integrity and claim-safety dimensions.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Verified ERs of 60,789 tCO₂e for the 2023 monitoring period are approximately 6.4× the pro-rata ex-ante expectation of ~9,490 tCO₂e (94,901 lifetime ÷ 10-year crediting period), raising a significant over-crediting concern.
• ⚠The verified ER figure was revised upward from 45,550 to 60,789 tCO₂e between two verification reports dated 2026-03-05 and 2026-04-17, a 33% increase in six weeks that is not explained in the extracted record.
• ⚠Ten corrective actions remain open, including methodology-version inconsistency, Np-value inconsistencies, and missing ex-ante calculation explanations, indicating material MRV weaknesses.
• ⚠The on-site verification visit was substituted with an Objective Observer due to security threats (terroristic attacks) in 2024 and 2025, reducing the direct-observation component of verification.

Credit Vintages