Humboldt Sawmill Company (HSC)

Audit Analysis

The Pacific Biochar – Humboldt Sawmill Company project is a biochar carbon-removal project verified by 350Solutions under the Isometric standard. While additionality was confirmed via an investment test and no reversal events were reported, the verification surfaced nine material findings including a $247,000 government grant omitted from the financial additionality model, five environmental and safety violations in the past five years, and a deviation from the protocol-defined sampling procedure. The combination of a project-specific baseline, a 200-year permanence claim supported by only a 2% buffer, and unresolved PDD amendments places meaningful risk on the robustness of the credit claims.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Five environmental and safety violations by HSC in the last five years, with unresolved Clean Air Act notices still outstanding at the time of verification
• ⚠A $247,000 government grant received in 2021 was omitted from the financial additionality model, undermining the investment-test conclusion
• ⚠Sampling procedure deviated from Method B requirements (one sample per batch instead of three samples from one selected batch per 10-batch block), compromising MRV reliability
• ⚠ERR figures differ by a factor of ~2.4 between the monitoring report (559.25) and the verification report (1,323.09), with no clear reconciliation in the extracted record
• ⚠Leakage is deemed negligible with no quantified deduction or detailed justification in the available documents

Credit Vintages

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