The Carbon Farming Program of Lithuania

Audit Analysis

The Carbon Farming Program of Lithuania is a soil-carbon AFOLU project with VVB-confirmed additionality and a 12% buffer pool, but it is undermined by extensive material findings (24 non-conformity reports, 56 information requests), a retroactive modelling approach that prevents ground-truth correction, and a 59% reduction in the lifetime ex-ante estimate between PDD revisions. The project's reliance on a project-specific RothC-based model with validation criteria unmet for four of five scenarios creates meaningful over-crediting risk that the buffer pool only partially mitigates.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠The project is retroactive (modelling backwards from 2023 to 2020), meaning overestimations in soil carbon sequestration cannot be corrected by ground-truthing, as noted in the verification report.
• ⚠Validation criteria per VMD0053 Box 5 are not met for 4 out of 5 crop-farming-group × practice-change scenarios, as flagged in the verification report.
• ⚠The lifetime ex-ante estimate was reduced from approximately 1.6 million tCO₂e (PDD, September 2023) to 651,365 tCO₂e (PDD, March 2026), a 59% reduction that signals significant initial overestimation.
• ⚠24 Non-Conformity Reports and 56 New Information Requests were raised and closed during verification, indicating pervasive documentation and methodological deficiencies.
• ⚠The conservation tillage definition was found to be inconsistent with the cited Hyun and Yoo (2024) TRM applicability criteria, and Tillage Rate Modifiers were deemed inappropriate for the project's defined practice change.

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