Browsing by Subject "Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Open Access
    Leveraging carbon revenue for poverty alleviation
    (2013) Atkins, Peter; Prasad, Gisela
    One of the intentions of the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was to use markets to allow the developed countries to supplement their own greenhouse gas reduction efforts with carbon reductions made in developing countries by purchasing carbon offsets. By these means, it was hoped, global greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced and developing countries would benefit through incoming carbon revenue and technology transfer. This has worked for China and India, which together account for 88% of all CDM carbon credits issued so far, but it hasn’t worked for Africa which has only a miserly 1% of the issued credits. The main reasons for this disparity are thought to be the high transaction costs of the CDM and the long and complicated registration, validation, monitoring and verification processes. The costs are around R400 000 to R2 000 000 per project (CCWG, 2009) . In addition it can take up to three years to get carbon revenue, if the project is one of the lucky 13% of projects to make it through to the end (see Appendix A – CDM Pipeline analysis). Partly in response to these CDM shortcomings, the voluntary carbon market has emerged. The voluntary carbon market has many players using many different standards and rules and regulations. Unfortunately, the CDM-like standards used by the bigger voluntary carbon market registries also incur high transaction costs and long lead times and therefore don’t work for typical, small African poverty alleviation projects with low greenhouse gas emission reduction potential. This has encouraged the development of small, agile carbon registries using simplified standards, which better fit the African projects. One such small registry and one of its poverty alleviation projects are analysed in this paper.
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    The role of sector no-lose targets in scaling up finance for climate change mitigation activities in developing countries
    (DEFRA, United Kingdom, 2008) Ward, Murray; Streck, Charlotte; Winkler, Harald; Jung, Martina; Hagemann, Markus; Höhne, Niklas; O'Sullivan, Robert
    The international climate change community is urgently looking for means to ‘scale up’ investments in clean technology and systems worldwide, especially in developing countries. The need for this to happen is signalled by the recent fourth assessment of the IPCC, in particular by Working Group III which noted: With current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades: CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2030 from energy use are projected to grow 45 to 110% over that period. Two thirds to three quarters of this increase in CO2 emissions is projected to come from nonAnnex I regions, with their average per capita energy CO2 emissions being projected to remain substantially lower than those in Annex I regions in 2030. Currently, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the only contribution by developing countries that is formally acknowledged under the international climate change regime. The need for something more than the current CDM is well documented, in particular something that addresses the scale issue by going beyond a project by project approach.
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    A selective assessment of business opportunities in South Africa under the Clean Development Mechanism
    (Energy Research Centre, University of Cape Town., 2006) Van Es, Denis; Winkler, Harald; Howells, Mark
    This report first summarizes matters related to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the South African context, considering its current position and its position after 2012. It then discusses South Africa in comparison with Brazil and India, summarized in terms of selected key indicators. CDM projects in Brazil and India, which are further along in terms of project development, are then outlined. Finally the report estimates the costs and benefits of CDM potential in industry through the deployment of energy efficiency measures as well as renewable electricity generation.