GS1385 Man and Man Enterprise Improved Cooking Stoves Programme in Ghana - VPA001

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard improved cooking stove project in Ghana has a verified additionality assessment and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but is undermined by an extraordinary volume of calculation errors, parameter inconsistencies, and corrective actions spanning multiple verification cycles. The project delivered roughly 53% of its pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the 2024 monitoring period, indicating under-delivery rather than over-crediting, yet the sheer number of MRV errors raises serious questions about the reliability of the verified figures. Documentation quality is further weakened by medium extraction confidence, contradictory values across reports, and an unresolved FPIC discrepancy.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Over 60 material findings and corrective actions across verification cycles, including incorrect pro-rata factors, duplicate stove serial entries, parameter mismatches between the monitoring report and ER sheet, and incorrect efficiency calculations — indicating systemic MRV quality problems
• ⚠FPIC status is contradictory: the 2024 monitoring report states FPIC was not conducted, while the 2026 validation report states it was — an unresolved discrepancy in a key safeguard
• ⚠FNRB value and method changed between reporting periods (0.99 local field in 2021 to 0.824 national default in 2025), and the 2024 report used a local field method, creating uncertainty about which baseline factor is appropriate
• ⚠EPA licence for the manufacturing facility had not been received at the time of the 2025 verification, raising regulatory compliance concerns
• ⚠No buffer pool, no permanence mechanism, and no LCA are documented, leaving reversal and permanence risks unaddressed

Credit Vintages