Integrated Domestic Energy Systems (IDES) for Clean Energy access and clean cooking in rural households in India

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard energy-efficiency project for clean cooking in rural India with VVB-confirmed additionality and no reversal events, but undermined by a 0% leakage deduction contradicted by a 5% figure in the monitoring report, a project-specific baseline, and recurring data-integrity issues (UID tracing failures, efficiency-value inconsistencies) flagged across multiple verification cycles. The project delivered roughly 110% of its pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the elapsed monitoring period, which is reasonable, but the volume of corrective actions and inter-document discrepancies erode confidence in the reported figures.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% in the 2023 verification report is directly contradicted by a 5% figure in the 2023 monitoring report; the justification is labelled 'quantified' in the later VR but 'not addressed' in the 2022 VR, creating ambiguity about whether leakage was ever properly quantified.
• ⚠Corrective action from the 2023 verification: household UIDs provided by the project proponent could not be traced in the household user database, raising a material risk of double-counting or phantom beneficiaries.
• ⚠Eight separate corrective actions were required on the PDD alone (efficiency calculations, solar PV capacity, ER limits, methodology version, SDG indicators), indicating the project design document had significant gaps at validation.
• ⚠The fnrb_method is reported as 'national_default' in the 2023 verification report but 'local_field' in the 2021 monitoring report, creating uncertainty about which emission-factor basis underpins the verified ERs.

Credit Vintages