VPA 28 - GHG Emission Reduction through use of Bondhu Chula (Improved Cook Stoves) in Bangladesh

Audit Analysis

The Bondhu Chula cookstove project in Bangladesh has VVB-verified additionality and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but suffers from a project-specific baseline, no buffer pool, unaddressed reversal risk, and an unverified 99% usage rate assumption that creates meaningful over-crediting exposure. Data quality issues in the monitoring period (name inconsistencies, identical ICS counts across consecutive periods) and five corrective action requests further erode confidence in the reported emission reductions.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Reversal risk is explicitly 'not addressed' in the verification report despite cookstoves having a finite 7-year lifetime and users potentially reverting to traditional stoves; no buffer pool is in place to cover this risk
• ⚠Usage rate is assumed at 99% with no verified usage rate found in any document, creating a significant over-crediting risk for a domestic cookstove project
• ⚠The verification report (Oct 2023) notes the number of ICS distributed in MP#5 is identical to MP#4 (183,882), and no new installations occurred during the monitoring period, raising questions about the representativeness of the monitoring sample
• ⚠Name inconsistencies between survey forms and the installation database affect 121 respondents in MS1 and 91 in MS2, undermining confidence in the verified emission reduction figures

Credit Vintages