GS5382 Energy for Sustainable Development - Malawi 1

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard improved-cookstove project in Malawi has a VVB-confirmed additionality assessment and a named verification body, but is undermined by a project-specific baseline with no recorded reassessment, a 36% gap between assumed and verified usage rates, and nine material findings including households using multiple stoves simultaneously. The project delivered roughly 56% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the 2019–2021 monitoring period, and six corrective actions remain outstanding. Multiple contradictions across documents—particularly on leakage justification, usage rates, and the crediting period—erode confidence in the data chain.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Verified usage rate of 0.64 is 36% below the assumed rate of 1.0 used in the ex-ante estimate, indicating the baseline assumptions were materially overstated.
• ⚠Nine material findings in the 2024 verification report, including households observed using multiple project stoves or baseline stoves alongside the improved cookstove, directly undermining the one-to-one displacement assumption.
• ⚠Stove replacement records were not fully traceable in the project database during the site visit, raising data-integrity concerns for the MRV chain.
• ⚠Six contradictions across documents, including a usage-rate figure of 100% in the 2021 monitoring report versus 64% in the 2024 monitoring report, and inconsistent crediting-period end dates (2022 vs 2023).
• ⚠No buffer pool percentage is stated in any available document, leaving no quantified safeguard against potential reversal from stove failure or replacement.

Credit Vintages