Zonguldak Landfill Gas to Electricity Project

Audit Analysis

The Zonguldak Landfill Gas to Electricity project has a verified additionality assessment and a named VVB, but the verification report surfaced 13 material findings including a 37%+ gap between estimated and actual emission reductions, an initial exclusion of project emissions, and multiple baseline and calculation inconsistencies. The 0% leakage deduction is justified only as 'deemed negligible,' which is a weak basis for a landfill gas project. Seven contradictions across documents and a low extraction confidence further erode confidence in the data underpinning the credit claims.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Actual emission reductions were 48.9% (2022) and 47.5% (2023 partial) lower than the project's own estimates, a discrepancy the VVB flagged as excessive
• ⚠Project emissions from electricity consumption were initially excluded from the calculation and only added after a site-visit finding, indicating a material under-reporting risk in the original monitoring
• ⚠Leakage deduction is 0% with a justification of 'deemed negligible' — a weak basis for a landfill gas project where uncollected methane is a well-known pathway
• ⚠Baseline scenario classification is inconsistent between the PDD (Case 1) and the verification report (Case 3), and the VVB required clarification on government policy validation
• ⚠The PDD ex-ante lifetime estimate (186,998 tCO2e) is 50% higher than the verified figure (124,559 tCO2e) reported in the verification report, raising questions about the robustness of the original estimates

Credit Vintages