Henan Zhumadian Youran Xiping Dairy Farm Biogas Utilization Project

Integrity

CTI’s joint Validation & Verification Report states the project uses AMS-III.D (v21.0) for methane recovery in animal manure management systems and concludes the assumptions, baseline, leakage, and additionality treatment are reasonable and compliant. The project is a dairy-manure biogas system with 6 CSTR digesters, flaring of excess biogas, and internal use of electricity/heat, which is generally a credible mitigation pathway; however, the report excerpt does not provide the full additionality test details or quantified leakage deductions, so I score it below best-in-class. For this project type, the main integrity risk is whether the manure management and biogas capture would have occurred without carbon finance, but the independent verifier did validate the project and found no unresolved material issues.

Transparency

The official registry-linked documents are publicly available in the extracted materials: validation deed, verification deed, and a joint validation & verification report with project description, methodology, and conclusions. The report includes project ID 5366, location, crediting period, monitoring period, and issuance quantity, which supports strong public traceability. I do not see the full monitoring report text or registry issuance/retirement page in the excerpt, so transparency is high but not perfect.

Claim Safety

The project is on VCS, but there is no evidence here of CCP approval, Article 6 authorization, or corresponding adjustment, so buyer claim safety is moderate rather than excellent. The monitoring period is 15-04-2023 to 31-12-2024 and the verification was completed on 02-04-2025, so the vintage is recent and not a major timing concern. A buyer could credibly claim support for verified methane avoidance from dairy manure management, but should avoid implying host-country inventory cancellation or aviation-grade eligibility absent additional evidence.

Documentation

Documentation is strong: the materials include a validation deed, verification deed, and a joint validation & verification report, all tied to Verra project ID 5366. The report states the project was validated and verified by CTI, covers the 15-04-2023 to 31-12-2024 monitoring period, and reports 91,275 tCO2e verified for that period. The only meaningful gap is that the excerpt does not show the full monitoring report tables or the registry issuance/retirement record, so I do not assign a perfect score.

Overall

Overall, this is a solid registry-grade VCS biogas project with strong public audit evidence and a recent verification cycle. The biggest positive driver is documentation quality: the verifier’s joint report, deeds, and project details are all public and specific, which materially improves confidence. The main reason the score is not higher is that claim safety and integrity still depend on the underlying additionality case and claim framework, which are credible but not fully demonstrated in the excerpt. Confidence is high because the evidence is official and independently audited, but the project remains a standard VCM methane-avoidance credit rather than a premium-claim asset.