UpEnergy – Social and Climate Impact Programme-Cooking Devices VPA-25

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard cooking-device project in Zambia with VVB-confirmed additionality, no reported reversal events, and all corrective actions closed. However, the absence of a buffer pool over a long crediting period, a 0% leakage deduction, and a notable discrepancy in claimed ERR figures between monitoring periods introduce moderate risk. The lack of verified ERR and an ex-ante lifetime estimate limits the ability to confirm the project is delivering as claimed.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠No buffer pool is documented for a crediting period extending to 2040, leaving no financial backstop against potential reversal or under-delivery.
• ⚠Claimed ERR of 100,132 (2024 monitoring report) is roughly half the 196,633 reported in the 2020 monitoring report, and no ex-ante lifetime estimate is available to benchmark delivery against.
• ⚠The verification report (2024) records a crediting period of 2021–2040 while the validation report (2025) records 2026–2030, a discrepancy that undermines confidence in the project's temporal boundaries.
• ⚠WBTs were not conducted for the 2022–2024 monitoring period; KPTs were used instead, and a corrective action requires WBTs before the next verification.

Credit Vintages