CIG has been informed of a United Nations climate panel’s decision to approve 32 new wind farms, which will together cut greenhouse gas emissions by around 11.3 million tonnes by the later part of 2012, as the current Kyoto Protocol comes to a close.
Under the Kyoto Protocols Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)businesses are able to invest in clean and renewable energy projects in developing nations, and in return receive offset credits, but only if they it can be shown that these schemes would have been unable to go ahead without the funding earned from the sale of credits.
In December 2009, CIG reported that the CDM’s executive board rejected 10 Chinese wind farms, saying that they were able to cut emissions profitably without receiving the offsets, known as Certified Emissions Reductions (CER’s).
CIG understands that the UN board has recently announced that two of the ten originally rejected were rejected by mistake, and at its latest meeting the board fully registered 13 Chinese wind farms and conditionally approved another 19 subject to minor corrections in the applications.
The six wind warms to be rejected would have generated another 2.1 million tonnes of CERs by 2012.
