SMG - Access to Clean Cooking in Himalayas VPA 04

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard clean-cooking PoA in Nepal with VVB-confirmed additionality and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but undermined by a project-specific baseline, absence of any stated buffer pool, and a long list of material findings (four CARs, coordinate and parameter inconsistencies) that raise data-reliability concerns. The verified emissions reductions substantially exceed the pro-rata ex-ante expectation, which is reassuring for claim safety, yet the five cross-document contradictions—including a direct FPIC true/false conflict within the same validation report—warrant caution before treating the credit as high-integrity.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠No buffer pool or permanence protection mechanism is stated in any available document, leaving reversal risk unaddressed for a 5-year crediting period.
• ⚠The validation report contains a direct internal contradiction on FPIC (recorded as both conducted and not conducted on the same date), undermining confidence in safeguards documentation.
• ⚠Four Corrective Action Requests were raised during verification, covering coordinate mismatches, missing monitoring parameters, incomplete beneficiary records, and inconsistent ex-post ER calculations.
• ⚠Baseline is project-specific with no stated reassessment date; for a 5-year crediting period starting January 2023, the next reassessment timing under Gold Standard rules is not documented.
• ⚠CORSIA eligibility and CCP status are both unstated, leaving dual-channel or double-claiming risk unassessed.

Credit Vintages

No issuances recorded on the registry.