*WWF Nepal Gold Standard Biogas Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) Project

Audit Analysis

The WWF Nepal biogas project has a structurally sound design with VVB-verified additionality and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but is undermined by a large volume of corrective actions (9 CARs, 1 CR), the absence of internal audits, and material data-accuracy issues around cattle counts, operational days, and firewood consumption. The gap between the assumed 100% usage rate and the verified 80.07% operational rate, combined with the 30-day assumption versus 27.4 actual operational days, creates a meaningful over-crediting risk that is not fully offset by the conservative leakage treatment.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Usage rate assumed at 100% in the 2024 verification report versus 80.07% verified operational rate — a 20-percentage-point gap that inflates claimed reductions
• ⚠Operational days assumed at 30 per month in the ER calculation versus 27.4 actual days recorded in the field survey, adding roughly 9% over-estimation
• ⚠No internal audits or control measures were conducted by BSP/WWF during the monitoring period, as noted in the verification report
• ⚠No double-accounting declaration was submitted to the VVB for the current monitoring period, leaving the risk of dual-channel crediting unaddressed
• ⚠Cattle-count discrepancies (households with zero cattle recorded as having two cows and two buffaloes) directly affect the biogas feedstock baseline and emission calculations

Credit Vintages