SAFE WATER PROJECT IN RWANDA V

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard water purification project in Rwanda that displaces thermal energy use, with VVB-confirmed additionality and no reversal events, but undermined by multiple open corrective actions, a flagged double-claiming risk around alternative purification technologies, a suppressed-demand concern, and a factor-of-10 discrepancy in the reported emission factor across documents. The project is certified and operational, yet the volume of unresolved findings and data inconsistencies limit confidence in the integrity and safety of its claims.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Material finding explicitly flags double-claiming risk: the project must add a question on alternative water purification technology access in the next usage survey to avoid claiming credits for water that would be purified by other means.
• ⚠A deviation request was raised because the project involves large-scale activity with suppressed demand, and GS4GG does not support such configurations — indicating the baseline may overstate additionality.
• ⚠Multiple corrective actions (CAR#01, CAR#03, CAR#04, CL#01, CL#02, CL#06) remain open, and the verification report states 'Findings not closed.'
• ⚠The national emission factor is reported as 96.82 in the 2023 verification report and 0.9682 in the 2025 monitoring report — a factor-of-10 discrepancy that cannot be resolved by a simple unit conversion.

Credit Vintages