A rewrite of rules that determine how many United Nations emission credits can be claimed by efficient coal power stations will probably cut the volume of supply, said CDM-Watch, the Bonn environmental lobby group.
The Clean Development Mechanism executive board, meeting in Bonn on May 9, requested a panel improve on proposed new rules governing credits for efficient coal plants, known as methodology ACM13. Coal stations can win credits if they show their technology cuts emissions that otherwise would have occurred.
“We don’t like coal at all in the CDM,” Anja Kollmuss, a carbon-market officer at the lobby group, said yesterday by phone. “We definitely would like to see these projects get as few credits as possible.”
There are already six projects registered under the current version of the methodology and 38 projects seeking approval, according to slides published this week on the website of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Together, those projects could achieve emission reductions of 37.6 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, the slides show.
That’s equivalent to 12 percent of last year’s total new supply of 320 million tons of credits.
The Methodologies Panel proposing the new rules needs to more clearly state why it’s making each change, Duan Maosheng of China, chairman of the executive board, said May 9 at the meeting, according to a webcast of proceedings.
“There are many requirements in the methodology that are not realistic to achieve,” such as detailed surveys of technologies used at comparable coal-stations, he said.
The panel would take account of public comments on its proposal and of those of the board members and seek to table a new version of the methodology at the next board meeting starting July 16, Thomas Bernheim, chairman of the panel, told the meeting.
