VPA 65 - GHG Emission Reduction through use of Bondhu Chula (Improved Cook Stoves) in Bangladesh

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard cookstove VPA in Bangladesh has a confirmed additionality assessment and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but is undermined by 11 cross-document contradictions, 18+ corrective actions, a project-specific baseline, and a striking discrepancy between the ex-ante lifetime estimate (49,146) and the single-year verified figure (523,571) that cannot be reconciled without a unit or scope explanation. The project is functional but carries meaningful data-reliability and over-crediting risk.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Ex-ante lifetime ERR of 49,146 versus a single-year verified ERR of 523,571 implies the project delivered roughly 160× the pro-rata expectation for the elapsed period, a discrepancy that is unexplained in the available documents and may indicate a unit mismatch, a per-unit vs. total scope error, or genuine over-crediting.
• ⚠Eleven contradictions across documents, including the additionality verification status flipping from unconfirmed (2023) to confirmed (2024), the FNRB method changing from local field to national default, and the crediting period shifting from 5 years to 15 years, raise material questions about data consistency.
• ⚠FPIC is recorded as not conducted in the most recent verification report (Aug 2024) but as conducted in the earlier validation report (Apr 2023); the more recent and authoritative document is privileged, leaving a safeguards gap.
• ⚠Eighteen or more corrective actions were required across the verification and validation cycles, spanning formatting, methodology naming, stakeholder consultation, grievance mechanism implementation, and double-counting prevention for stove serial numbers.

Credit Vintages