Isra-Mart srl:CDM board promises carbon offset outreach programme

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The UN panel in charge of the international body's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) carbon offset scheme has adopted a two-year business plan that it says will help improve access to the carbon market and extending the scheme's reach into smaller nations.

The 10-member executive board that oversees the CDM concluded its 59th meeting last week by agreeing an action plan designed to achieve its five stated goals for 2012: greater efficiency, increased global reach, enhanced transparency, more effective promotion of the mechanism and improved objectivity, clarity and integrity for offset processes.

The CDM is part of the Kyoto Protocol and enables rich countries to offset their carbon emissions by purchasing carbon emissions reductions (CERs) from projects in the developing world.

The CDM market has proven successful with almost 549 million CERs issued to date, with a further 2.7 billion in the pipeline. But the scheme has faced consistent criticism with opponents claiming it is guilty of approving projects with questionable environmental credentials and focusing too much on projects in China and India at the expense of smaller countries.

"We've come a long way in the past number of years, enhancing efficiency and increasing participation in the CDM," said the board's new chairman Martin Hession, who is also head of global carbon markets at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). "This business plan will take us the rest of the way there, to 2012 and beyond.

"The board has taken on five goals that address virtually everything asked of the mechanism by parties to the Kyoto Protocol, and public and private sector stakeholders. We've also approved a detailed approach on how to deliver on those goals."

In terms of expansion, the board hopes that approving a new baseline and monitoring methodology for small-scale biogas generators will bring as many as 20 million African projects into the scheme.

"We're working hard to extend the reach of the CDM, especially in Africa," said Hession. "This methodology should do a lot to further that goal."

The board has also agreed to allow registered projects to earn credits from the time of registration, in an attempt to clear the backlog of project applications.

However, there was no suggestion of new issuance procedures, also known as methodologies, to clear the surplus credits issued so far this year. The board has a target to rid the CDM of excess credits by the middle of this year.