Novocarbo Baltic Sea

Audit Analysis

The Novocarbo Baltic Sea biochar project has a VVB-confirmed investment additionality test and a 16.5% buffer pool, but the verification report identified seven material findings including potentially inflated production data, expired sustainability certifications, and unaccounted emissions from chipping and transport. The absence of a verified ERR figure, leakage treatment, and FNRB value creates meaningful uncertainty around the 133,084 tCO₂e lifetime claim. Corrective actions are specified but remain open, leaving the project in a provisional state.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Seven material findings in the verification report, including potentially inflated manufacturer-specification data, expired FSC/PEFC/SURE-EU certifications, and a moisture content assumption (20%) that underestimates actual lab values (23.1% and 26.7%), all of which could overstate net CO₂ removals.
• ⚠No verified ERR figure is available in the extracted record; the 133,084 tCO₂e figure is a lifetime ex-ante estimate with no monitoring-period verification to confirm delivery.
• ⚠Six corrective actions remain open, including recalculation of CO₂eq based on actual production output and accounting for previously omitted chipping and transport emissions.
• ⚠Leakage treatment is entirely absent from the available documents — no deduction percentage, no justification, and no methodology reference.

Credit Vintages Exhausted