Isramart : CDM to tackle festering Chinese wind issue in March

Isramart news:
Clifford Mahlung, the newly appointed chairman of the Clean Development Mechanism’s (CDM) executive board, says the group’s next meeting in March will be focused on resolving its ongoing dispute with developers of Chinese wind projects.

Mahlung acknowledges that there is a growing fissure within the CDM’s board regarding whether to register clean-energy projects in fast-developing countries such as China, where they may be commercially viable without CDM funds.

“The board itself will have to make a decision – they are not at one place,” Mahlung tells BusinessWeek. “For me personally, if the projects are achieving the ultimate objective of the convention, which is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then that should be paramount in the thinking.”

The conflict came to a head – and grabbed international headlines – when the CDM’s board rejected applications from 10 Chinese wind projects less than a week before climate-change talks commenced in Copenhagen. Last week, at its first meeting since Copenhagen, the board reversed its decision on two of the projects, while rejecting six new ones.

Mahlung says the board will tackle the issue at its next meeting starting 22 March.

In early February, Mahlung, a meteorologist by training and Jamaica’s lead climate negotiator, took the helm of the CDM from Lex de Jonge of The Netherlands.

Mahlung, who served as vice-chair of the CDM’s executive board in 2009, has made it clear that he will make greater transparency of the group’s proceedings and the expansion of CDM projects throughout Africa and island states top priorities of his tenure. In December he commented that he wants to see a new CDM in 2010 “where the board spends less time behind closed doors”.

“I also hope to provide more information and clarification on some of the decisions that the board makes, by having a full-time communication specialist recording and reporting certain aspects of the board meetings, with the aim that we can have more people understanding clearly just how the board operates.”