Highlights CDM Executive Board 58th meeting

Cancun, 26 November 2010 – The CDM Executive Board at its final meeting of the year heard encouraging news about the processing of its regulatory case load, made good progress in planning and prioritizing its activities and took decisions to safeguard quality of emission reductions, in part based on a much anticipated report from its Methodologies Panel. The Board heard from the UNFCCC secretariat that the current backlog in registration and issuance case load would be cut by two-thirds by New Year. The target is to have submissions waiting no more than 30 days before commencing processing. This is being achieved by hiring staff in the secretariat, reassigning staff, engaging outside experts and through efficiencies built into new registration, issuance and review procedures adopted in 2010. “The CDM has struggled with its success. Ways were found to respond and stakeholders can now look forward to reasonable wait-times,” said CDM Executive Board Chair Clifford Mahlung. On the first day of its meeting, the Board discussed strategic priorities, broadly covering consolidation of decisions, streamlining of processes and systems, enhancing transparency and broadening participation. The discussion was informed by a joint Board and secretariat retreat held in September. “We achieved a great deal in 2010. We adopted new registration, issuance and review procedures, a monitoring framework, and methodology enhancements. Capacity-building, communication and outreach were also stepped up. Now we’re looking for ways to build on that in 2011,” said Mr. Mahlung. Notable among the methodology work addressed at this meeting was consideration of a report prepared by the Board’s Methodologies Panel into the methodology used by projects that destroy HFC-23 gas, a by-product in the manufacture of refrigerant and chemical feedstock HCFC-22. The Board decided to place on hold and revise the methodology to further safeguard environmental integrity. The amount of credits an HFC-23 project can earn is pegged to historical production levels and to historical or established waste-to-product ratios. The Methodologies Panel report highlighted concerns principally over the latter, the so-called W-factor. “Without the CDM there is no incentive to incinerate HFC-23 waste gas, an extremely potent greenhouse gas. With a revision of the methodology we’ll be working to further ensure that the important incentive provided by the CDM leads to real emission reductions,” Mr. Mahlung said. In other matters relating to HFC-23, the Board allowed issuance of CERs to 12 projects, representing 17 issuance requests that had been put under review, according to established rules and procedures of the CDM. One other HFC-23 project under review was not issued credits, due to an unrelated matter, concerning metering and monitoring. The Board at this meeting was also expected to decide on a request for renewal of crediting period of HFC-23 project activity 0003, in Ulsan, Korea. The Board will resume its consideration of that request at its next meeting. For the full report of the meeting see <http://cdm.unfccc.int/EB/index.html>.