GS1340 Efficient cookstoves in Burkina Faso – VPA-13 - tiipaalga F3PA cookstoves in Kourwéogo

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard cookstove project in Burkina Faso has a VVB-verified additionality assessment and documented safeguards, but is undermined by a very low leakage deduction (0.95%) with contradictory earlier figures, an unaddressed permanence risk (no buffer pool, reversal events not assessed), a significant usage-rate decline from the PDD assumption, and numerous material findings requiring corrective action. Multiple contradictions across monitoring and verification reports reduce confidence in the reported emission reduction figures.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0.95% in the 2024 verification report contradicts a 5% figure in the 2022 monitoring report; the very low deduction is inconsistent with a cookstove project where displaced fuel use is a realistic leakage pathway
• ⚠No buffer pool percentage is stated in any available document and reversal events are explicitly 'not addressed', leaving permanence risk unquantified for a project with a 2027 crediting end date
• ⚠Usage rate assumed in the PDD (95%) has declined to 69.9% in the 2022 monitoring report, a 26% drop that signals stove deterioration and underutilisation, yet the ex-ante lifetime estimate is not available to assess cumulative over-crediting
• ⚠Twelve material findings (CARs and CLs) were raised in the verification report, including GWP value errors, date inconsistencies, GPS duplication in the household database, and SDG indicator misreporting
• ⚠Minimum extraction confidence is rated low, indicating at least one key document was poorly readable, which limits the reliability of the structured data used for scoring

Credit Vintages