GS avoidance China Registry: Certified & crediting Documentazione completa General Methodology v2.0

Sichuan Rural Poor - Household Biogas Development Programme

GS-148 ↗

5.7 / 10

Integrity

6.2

Transparency

5.4

Claim Safety

5.8

Documentation

5.1

Score Breakdown

Integrity

verified Additionality was tested using a barrier approach and was confirmed by the VVB in the verification report.

missing The verification report records CAR 01, CL 01, and CAR 02, indicating non-trivial issues during review.

Transparency

verified The project has a named VVB, a defined monitoring period, and a stated annual survey approach for usage monitoring.

missing No verified or assumed usage-rate figure is available in the extracted record, and no ERR totals were provided.

Claim Safety

verified Leakage was quantified with a 10% deduction, which is better than an unaddressed leakage assumption.

missing The baseline is project-specific rather than clearly standardized, and the crediting-period inconsistency raises over-crediting risk.

Documentation

verified Multiple source documents were used, including the verification report, validation report, monitoring report, and PDD.

missing The extraction confidence is only medium, and the record includes unresolved or partially resolved findings from the verification process.

Detailed Analysis

Integrity

The verification report confirms additionality through a barrier test and says the VVB validated it, which is a meaningful positive. The project also applies a quantified leakage deduction of 10% and the baseline was last reassessed in 2021, both of which support methodological robustness. On the negative side, the verification report lists CAR 01, CL 01, and CAR 02, so the project was not free of material review issues.

Transparency

The record identifies the VVB, the monitoring period, and an annual survey as the usage monitoring method, which helps traceability. However, the extracted facts do not provide verified ERR totals, and the usage rate is not stated in available documents. That leaves an important gap in public-facing MRV clarity.

Claim Safety

Claim safety is helped by the quantified 10% leakage deduction and the fact that this is an avoidance project rather than a removal project with permanence exposure. Still, the baseline is project-specific, and the contradiction on the crediting period between the monitoring report and validation report creates uncertainty about the exact claim window. Because CORSIA eligibility and CCP status are not stated, dual-claim risk cannot be ruled out from the extracted record.

Documentation

The evidence base is reasonably broad, with the verification report, validation report, monitoring report, and PDD all represented, and 16 documents were used in extraction. Even so, the minimum extraction confidence is only medium, and the verification report contains multiple findings and corrective actions. That combination suggests adequate but not strong documentation quality.

Overall

I privileged the verification report for findings and the monitoring report for operational details, while noting the validation report in the crediting-period contradiction because it is the more recent document in the extracted record. The contradiction between the monitoring report and validation report on the crediting period is a reliability issue, so I reduced confidence and the overall score accordingly. The project looks broadly credible, but the unresolved findings, missing usage-rate data, and document inconsistency keep it in the mid-range rather than high-confidence territory.

Audit Analysis

This is a Gold Standard biogas avoidance project with VVB-confirmed additionality, a quantified leakage deduction, and a recent baseline reassessment, which supports moderate integrity. However, the record shows several material findings, no verified usage-rate data, and a crediting-period contradiction across documents, which weakens confidence in the claim quality.

Project Description

The Sichuan Rural Poor-Household Biogas Development Programme, jointly developed and managed by German UPM Umwelt-Projekt-Management GmbH and its Chinese partner Chengdu Oasis Science & Technology Co Ltd, aims at improving the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people in rural Sichuan while contributing to protect the earth’s climate and promoting sustainable development. To this end, this programme exclusively addresses poor smallholders with just a few pigs and uses carbon finance to help them afford the purchase and maintenance of biogas digesters. This approach has been very successful. Meanwhile, 395,435 low-income rural households in China’s Sichuan province have decided to take part in this programme and are benefitting from using proven and reliable biogas digesters and efficient biogas cook stoves making it one of the largest and most impactful household biogas programmes in the world. The biogas digesters are fed with animal manure, previously just discharged into open pits, and convert it into clean and affordable biogas to be used conveniently for cooking, heating, or lighting instead of coal and firewood. After switching to biogas, each participating smallholder farmer family saves approx. 1.8 tCO2e of methane and carbon dioxide emissions year by year. This amounts to an annual GHG emissions avoidance of around 725,000 tCO2e. All biogas equipment distributed under this programme is produced domestically in China and adheres to Chinese quality and safety standards. It is installed and maintained by the Sichuan Rural Energy Office (SREO) via its dense network of local service centers and its many certified biogas technicians all over Sichuan. All households supported by this programme have received the required trainings by SREO staff on safe use of biogas to prevent any dangerous accidents and make sure that the biogas digesters operate without malfunctions or interruptions until (or even beyond) their 20-year lifetime. In additi

Red Flags

The verification report lists multiple findings and corrective actions, including one CAR that was raised, which signals unresolved documentation or methodology issues.
The extracted record contains a contradiction on the crediting period between the monitoring report and validation report, creating a reliability concern.

Credit Vintages

	Issued	Retired	Available
2013	16,983	16,983	0
2014	104,520	103,614	906
2016	101,263	66,017	35,246
2017	53,610	28,466	25,144
2018	93,845	57,000	36,845
2019	289,509	197,253	92,256
Total	659,730	469,333	190,397

Cosa migliorerebbe questo punteggio

Publish verified ERR totals, usage-rate results, and the underlying monitoring tables for the full crediting period.
Resolve the crediting-period inconsistency across documents and clearly close out all verification findings with supporting evidence.

Questi suggerimenti indicano quali prove pubbliche aggiuntive potrebbero migliorare il livello di confidenza di questa valutazione. Non garantiscono un punteggio futuro più alto.