Household Biogas plants installed in rural areas of Maharashtra

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard household biogas project in rural Maharashtra with a VVB-verified investment additionality test, quantified 5% leakage deduction, and documented safeguards including FPIC and a grievance mechanism. However, the project-specific baseline, unaddressed reversal risk, absence of a buffer pool, and several cross-document contradictions (particularly on FNRB method and ERR figures across periods) limit confidence in the robustness of the credit claims. The project is at the end of its 10-year crediting period, and the lifetime ex-ante ERR estimate is not available in the extracted record, preventing a full pro-rata delivery check.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Reversal risk for biogas plants is explicitly 'not addressed' in the verification report, and no buffer pool percentage is stated — a material permanence gap for a project where plant failure or abandonment would reverse emissions reductions.
• ⚠The FNRB method is reported as 'national_default' in the 2021 verification report but 'local_field' in the 2022 monitoring report, creating uncertainty about which basis was actually used for the final credit calculation.
• ⚠The lifetime ex-ante ERR estimate is not found in the extracted record, making it impossible to verify whether the 40,668 tCO2e claimed for the 2021–2022 monitoring period is consistent with the original project design.
• ⚠Multiple ERR figures across documents (40,668; 45,493; 48,551; 97,102) span different monitoring periods and cannot be reconciled into a single consistent trajectory without the PDD's ex-ante schedule.

Credit Vintages