Bonn, 6 January 2010

The Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism ( CDM) has registered its 2000th project, a biogas extraction and utilization project, in Sakaeo Province, Thailand, expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 56,000 tonnes annually.

The first CDM project was registered on 18 November 2004. It took almost three and a half years for the 1000th project to be registered on 14 April 2008.

"The CDM has passed another milestone. It is fascinating to look back at how we started, and consider how far we have come. It is heartening to see the pace of registrations picking up such that the 2000th project gets registered in less than two years," said Lex de Jonge, Chair of the CDM Executive Board.

With 450 projects under different stages of consideration by the CDM Executive Board, and over 2,000 further projects being assessed by DOEs it is hoped that the 3,000 mark will be reached in an even shorter period of time.

To achieve this the Executive Board will be taking a number of actions to speed up the registration process, including amending its timelines and the review process as mandated by the last meeting of the CMP in Copenhagen, ensuring that issues with incoming requests for registration are handled as efficiently as possible through enhanced initial screening, and ensuring that adequate resources are available to process the new requests in a timely manner.

CDM projects have so far generated more than 365 million certified emission reductions (CERs). The mechanism is anticipated to generate more than 2.9 billion CERs in the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

In another development, there are now 40 Programme of Activities (PoAs) under validation, which is a big leap forward expected to increase the effectiveness of the mechanism.

Under PoA, many projects, over a wide area, can be consolidated and submitted as one single project, thus reducing transaction costs without reducing environmental integrity.

"The PoA approach is an example of untapped potential that can contribute to the scaling up of the CDM. In some countries, single projects are often too small to be commercially viable. Programmatic CDM could dramatically change this, as a PoA might cover an entire city, or entire state. This is expected to increase CDMís applicability and help the mechanism come closer to achieving its vast potential," said Mr. de Jonge.

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