UN issues 16 CDM projects with carbon credits

Sixteen GHG-cutting projects received around 1.6 million carbon credits from the UN last week.

The bulk of the credits issued between 18-25 May were delivered to a Chinese clean development mechanism (CDM) project to destroy the potent waste gas HFC 23.

The Zhejiang project, whose partners include Japanese trading house Marubeni, received just short of 1 million certified emission reduction (CER) credits.

The project is expected to deliver around 5.8 million CERs a year.

The only other project to receive more than 100,000 CERs last week was Chinese wind power project Huitengxile.

The project, which is backed by Spanish utility Endesa, was issued with 216,000 CERs.

Of last week’s CDM issuances, nine were from projects in India, four in China and three in Brazil.

Lagging behind

The amount of issued credits is a huge increase on a week earlier, when only 142,000 credits were doled out.

But the issuance rate still lags way behind the average weekly rate of 5.8 million CERs which would be necessary to deliver the 1.343 billion credits expected by the UN by the end of 2012.

Around 288 million CERs have been issued by the UN to date.

Last week, Point Carbon reported project developers were requesting issuance less often mainly due to higher administration costs and historically low CER prices.

Four registered

Meanwhile, four CDM projects were registered by the UN last week, but only two are expected to deliver more than 100,000 credits annually.

The Duerbote wind farm project, which is partnered by the UK’s Carbon Resource Management Ltd, is expected to generate around 120,000 CERs a year.

Another was a project to avoid methane gas emissions at a waste treatment plant in Ghazipur, India, which is expected to generate around 112,000 CERs a year.

The other two CDM projects to gain UN approval last week were much smaller scale activities in China and Malaysia.

CDM projects must be registered by the UN before they can request to be issued with any carbon credits.