This paper examines several issues that arise in awarding emission reduction credits to coal projects in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It identifies systematic weaknesses in the coal methodology’s (ACM0013) design and application. The authors estimate that shortcomings lead to significant over-crediting of Certified Emission Reductions and discuss why a revision of the methodology to more accurately estimate emissions reductions may not be possible because of data constraints and weak signal-to-noise ratio.
CDM Watch summarizes the most relevant outcomes of the last CDM Executive Board meeting. The 64th Board meeting will be held 24‐26 October 2011, less than a month from now and the 65th meeting will be just ahead of the COP in Durban, 21‐25 November 2011. We added links to relevant documents as possible and we welcome your …
Read more “Summary of the 63rd CDM Executive Board Meeting”
The CDM now allows new coal plants to earn tradeable emissions credits for claimed improvements in power plant efficiency. This Policy Brief explains why coal projects do not belong in the CDM. They would have been built in the absence of the CDM, i.e. the projects that have come forward to date are uniformly ‘non-additional’ and will therefore generate carbon credits that do not represent real emission reductions. They also conflict with the CDM’s sustainability objectives by inflicting toxic burdens on local populations and ecosystems while undermining climate mitigation goals by locking in billions of tons of CO2 emissions over decades to come instead of investing in renewable energies and a low carbon development path.
For the CDM, electricity grid emission factors (grid EFs) directly determine the volume of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) for all project types that relate to renewable electricity generation or reduction of electricity consumption. The higher the grid EF, the higher the number of CERs a project can generate. This study examines whether the benchmarks published by DNAs are conforming with the CDM rules and if they are overestimating emission reductions.
Following several comments and question regarding SEI’s adipic acid paper published in October 2010, this paper responds to the most pertinent critiques aiming to clarify some of the issues that have been raised.
This paper evaluates projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that abate N2O emissions from adipic acid production. The analysis shows that carbon markets enabled N2O emissions abatement levels that had not previously been achieved. However, it also indicates that the CDM appears to have caused significant carbon leakage during the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009. We estimate that about 20% of the CERs issued for CDM adipic acid plants for 2008 and 2009 – totaling to about 13.5 MtCO2e – do not represent real emission reductions.
Under current rules, the 19 registered HFC-23 destruction projects are expected to generate about 478 million CERs by 2012 and more than one billion CERs by 2020. In 2009 European installations surrendered 46,364,460 HFC-23 CERs, worth an estimated €552 million2. However these CERs, which constitute the majority of offsets used by European companies (59% in …
Read more “HFC-23 Offsets in the Context of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme – Policy Briefing”
