UN Climate Change News, 16 December 2020 – The Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) concluded its 108th meeting this Monday and agreed on temporary measures to apply to CDM activities generating emission reductions after 2020. These measures will be applied until the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) provides needed guidance at its next meeting in Glasgow in November 2021.
The second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end on 31 December 2020. The CMP, the ultimate decision-making authority of the Kyoto Protocol, was scheduled to meet in conjunction with COP26 in Glasgow in November this year. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, COP26, and thereby also the sixteenth meeting of the CMP, has been postponed until November 2021. The CMP therefore could not give the Board the requested guidance on how to consider the emission reductions of CDM activities after 31 December 2020.
Some of the operational criteria for the CDM are defined for each commitment period. Specifically, these criteria include means by which to estimate emission reductions and removals and how to technically issue CERs into the Kyoto Protocol registry infrastructure. Also, the handling of afforestation/reforestation activities requires consideration as they are subject to specific rules, which are limited to activities commenced during the first and second commitment periods of the Kyoto Protocol.
The CDM Executive Board has for the past three meetings considered different options for how to bridge the period from the end of the second commitment period, 31 December 2020, until the next meeting of CMP (CMP16) in November 2021. At its meeting the Board decided to apply temporary measures.
Requests for registration of project activities and programmes of activities (PoAs), renewal of crediting periods and PoA periods, and inclusion and renewal of crediting periods of component project activities that have a crediting period or PoA period starting on or after 1 January 2021 will continue to be processed, in accordance with the existing CDM rules and CMP decisions. They will be recorded as “provisional” and will therefore only be finalized by the Board after guidance has been received from the CMP.
Requests for issuance of CERs for emission reductions achieved on or after 1 January 2021 will also be processed in accordance with the existing CDM rules and CMP decisions, but issuance will remain provisional, pending guidance and confirmation from the CMP. The issuance of CERs will therefore be finalized by the Board only after guidance has been received from the CMP.
Considering that the completion of analysis of submissions is provisional and is only finalized by the Board after guidance from the CMP, project participants and coordinating/managing entities will be required, when making submissions, to acknowledge and accept the risk that it may not be possible for CERs to be issued for the emission reductions achieved pending final decision by CMP. Due to this risk, the Board also agreed to not charge upfront fees for the consideration of such submissions until the CMP has provided guidance.
The full text of the 108th CDM Executive Board meeting decisions is available online.
This was also the last meeting chaired by Mr. El Hadji Mbaye Diagne, whose term as Chair of the Board expires at the end of 2020. Members of the Board, as well as the UNFCCC secretariat, thanked him for his outstanding chairmanship under challenging circumstances, both in terms of the substantive issues facing in 2020, in the absence of the annual UN Climate Change conference, and the practical context of conducting all meetings online during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The Chair said: “We have tried to find the best solutions to fit all the stakeholders of the CDM, including DNAs, DOEs, business participants, project participants, etc. This was particularly difficult due to the virtual nature of our meetings throughout the year, of course, but also because the complicated issues we had to consider in the absence of guidance from the CMP. I, and my co-chair, Mr. Olivier Kassi, want to thank all our colleagues of the Board for their commitment, flexibility and professionalism, which were key to finding consensus on these temporary measures”.
The Chair reiterated that the CDM Executive Board will continue to process in full any requests which relate to emission reductions occurring on or before 31 December 2020 and that no temporary measures are needed for the consideration and finalization of such submissions.
The next meeting of the CDM Executive Board (EB 109) will be held in the first and second week of March.
The CDM rewards projects in developing countries for each tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) they reduce or avoid by delivering carbon credits that are tradeable on the global carbon market. The incentive has led to registration of more than 8,100 projects and programmes of activities in 111 countries, from renewable energy projects, to projects that spread the use of healthy, efficient cook-stoves, to large industrial gases projects. To date, more than 2 billion certified emission reduction (CER) credits have been issued, a token of the amount of GHG that was avoided or reduced thanks to the CDM.