Santa Marta Landfill Gas (LFG) Capture for Electricity Generation Project

Audit Analysis

The Santa Marta LFG project is a long-running Gold Standard landfill gas-to-electricity project with VVB-verified additionality, but it is burdened by a serious contradiction over whether gas capture is legally required, an extensive list of calibration and data-quality findings, a 0% leakage deduction with no stated justification, and the absence of a buffer pool. The project delivered roughly 73% of its pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the elapsed monitoring period, which is conservative, yet the underlying data reliability is undermined by repeated metering and reporting errors across multiple verification cycles.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Contradiction on whether LFG capture is legally required: the 2016 PDD states it is not, while the 2026 monitoring report states it is — if the legal requirement post-dates the PDD, the additionality claim is fundamentally undermined.
• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% with justification recorded as 'not addressed' in the most recent verification report (2023), contradicting an earlier 2019 report that described it as 'quantified'.
• ⚠No buffer pool percentage or permanence mechanism is stated in any available document for a project with inherent reversal risk (landfill gas composition and flow can decline).
• ⚠Environmental Compliance Program has not been accepted by the Chilean Environmental Superintendency — an open finding carried across multiple verification cycles.
• ⚠Extensive and recurring calibration failures (flow meters, pressure transmitters, temperature transmitters, gas analyzers) across multiple monitoring periods, requiring repeated conservative error penalties.

Credit Vintages