Up Energy Improved Cookstoves Programme, Uganda – CPA No 014

Audit Analysis

The Up Energy Improved Cookstoves project in Uganda has a confirmed additionality assessment and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but is undermined by a project-specific baseline, the absence of any stated buffer pool, and an unusually high volume of material findings and corrective actions across its verification and monitoring records. Twelve cross-document contradictions—spanning ERR figures, FNRB values, FPIC status, and crediting period length—raise meaningful questions about data reliability and internal consistency. The project delivered roughly 470% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the elapsed monitoring window, which is conservative for claim safety but warrants scrutiny of the underlying assumptions.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠No buffer pool percentage is stated in any available document, leaving reversal risk from stove replacement or abandonment unmitigated for an energy-efficiency project.
• ⚠Twelve contradictions between documents, including a crediting-period discrepancy of 7 years (monitoring report, 2024) versus 5 years (validation report, 2025), and a FNRB value that shifted from 0.82 to 0.39 between successive verification reports.
• ⚠FPIC status is contradictory: the 2023 verification report records it as not conducted, while the 2025 validation report records it as conducted—no reconciliation is provided.
• ⚠Sixteen material findings and seventeen corrective actions are listed, covering survey-record discrepancies, calibration gaps, circular references in ex-ante ER values, and inconsistent crediting-period dates across VPAs.
• ⚠CORSIA eligibility and CCP status are not stated in any available document, leaving dual-channel risk unassessed.

Credit Vintages