An in depth look into measuring additionality from studies in India’s electricity sector and other Chinese and Indian project documents by Barbara Haya at UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources group.
Some snippets:
“Our inability to accurately measure how much individual projects reduce emissions, compounded by the current and future use of offsetting credits by industrialized countries, risk substantially undermining the effectiveness of the post-2012 climate change regime and our ability to control global greenhouse gas emissions. Any offsetting mechanism included post- 2012 will need to:
- include an alternative means for targeting projects and activities that will affect emissions
- trajectories without testing additionality on a project-by-project basis, a process which is essentially subjective and inaccurate;
- be predictable, providing certain benefits to those depending on it; and
- be small in the context of deeper Annex 1 targets.
…
Both the large-scale use of offsetting to meet industrialized country targets and the continuation of project-based offsetting risk undermining the ability of global climate change agreements to control greenhouse gas emissions.”
