Over  4,000 projects are in the pipeline awaiting approval by the United Nations. The projects must qualify through a rigorous and public registration and issuance process designed to ensure real, measurable and verifiable emission reductions that are additional to what would have occurred without the project. The mechanism is overseen by the CDM Executive Board, answerable ultimately to the countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol  requires that countries limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The emission reductions took on economic value. To help countries meet their emission targets, and to encourage the private sector and developing countries to contribute to emission reduction efforts, negotiators of the Protocol included three market-based mechanisms – Emissions Trading, the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement, allowing industrialized countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment to invest in projects like wind farms, small hydro or solar power plants that reduce emissions in developing countries from which they earn  certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialized countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.

The mechanism is meant to stimulate sustainable development and emission reductions, while giving industrialized countries some flexibility in how they meet their emission reduction limitation.

Source : Konaxis

Tags: China, clean energy, gas emissions, Kyoto Protocol