GS1385 Man and Man Enterprise Improved Cooking Stoves Programme in Ghana - VPA003

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard improved cooking stove VPA in Ghana with VVB-confirmed additionality and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but significant concerns arise from the absence of a buffer pool, a project-specific baseline, and a verified emission reduction of only ~7% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the elapsed crediting period. Multiple contradictions across documents (fNRB value, leakage rate, FPIC status, crediting period) and a large number of corrective actions indicate ongoing data-quality and consistency issues that temper confidence in the project's claims.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Verified emissions (144,653 tCO2e for 2024) represent only ~7.4% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation (~1,957,938 tCO2e/year), indicating severe under-delivery or an over-optimistic lifetime estimate of 9,789,690 tCO2e
• ⚠FPIC status is contradictory: the 2024 monitoring report states it was not conducted, while the 2026 validation report states it was conducted — this inconsistency undermines safeguards confidence
• ⚠The PDD dates from 2014, more than seven years before the project's 2021 start, raising questions about the currency and relevance of the original design assumptions
• ⚠Twelve or more corrective action requests were issued across validation and verification cycles, including inconsistencies in efficiency values, stove counts, and energy savings calculations

Credit Vintages