UpEnergy – Social and Climate Impact Programme-Cooking Devices VPA-6

Audit Analysis

The UpEnergy cooking-device project in Zambia has a VVB-verified additionality assessment and a consistent usage rate, but is undermined by a project-specific baseline, a 20-year crediting period with no stated buffer pool, a leakage deduction that shifted from 5% to 0% between verification cycles, and a large backlog of 20 corrective actions spanning safeguarding gaps, data inconsistencies, and methodology compliance. The 11 cross-document contradictions—including a crediting-period discrepancy of nearly 12 years—raise material questions about internal data reliability.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Crediting period stated as 2021–2040 in the 2024 verification report but 2022–2029 in the 2026 monitoring report, a gap of roughly 12 years that cannot be reconciled without clarification.
• ⚠Leakage deduction changed from 5% (2023 verification report) to 0% (2024 verification report) while the justification label also shifted from 'quantified' to 'deemed negligible' in the 2026 monitoring report, with no documented re-analysis.
• ⚠20 corrective actions remain open, including missing safeguarding-principles sections (4.3b, 4.4), absent WBTs, and an emission-reduction cap inconsistent with Community Services Activity Requirements.
• ⚠The 2023 verification report verified only 394 ERRs, while the 2024 report verified 100,132 ERRs; the 256-fold jump is unexplained in the extracted record.

Credit Vintages