Executive Summary

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was designed to bring clean and sustainable development to poor countries while enabling rich countries to achieve their emissions reductions cost effectively.

Yet, the CDM allows new coal plants to earn tradable emissions credits for claimed improvements in power plant efficiency. This is unacceptable because:

• New coal power plants, no matter how efficient, undermine climate mitigation goals by locking in millions of tons of CO2 emissions over decades to come.
• Coal’s overall human and ecological toll is staggering.
• These projects are not additional because new coal power plants are built to be efficient to minimize fuel costs, regardless of CDM support. Such offsets therefore lead to a net increase in global GHG emissions