Download Using the Kyoto Protocol as a stepping stone.

Editorial
Using the Kyoto Protocol as a stepping stone.
The closer we get to the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol the more successful it
gets. We have learned that it takes years to get new carbon market mechanisms up and running. Since we
according to the IPCC [1] do not have much time our efforts to construct a new legally enforced multilateral
climate change regime after Durban should build on the experience from implementing the Kyoto Protocol.
In order to stay below a 2⁰ C increase in 2100 we should according to the IPCC soon stop the increase in the
global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the UNEP Gap Report [2] this is quantified so that we should go
down from the present 48 GtCO2/yr to 44 GtCO2/yr in 2020 and further to 14 GtCO2/yr in 2050. This means
an annual decrease of 3% in the global GHG emissions after peaking. So an enormous effort is absolutely
needed – a grand transition to a low carbon future of all sectors of the society: transport, housing, industry,
service, waste.
Counting the GHG reductions in all the pledges submitted to the Copenhagen Accord there is a large gap of
4-6 GtCO2 reduction missing in reaching the 44 GtCO2/yr in 2020. No improvement in this has happened the
last 2 years, so there has been no need to update the UNEP climate pledge website [101], which was made
under the COP15 in Copenhagen.
So how have the three Mechanisms under the Kyoto protocol performed. Emission Trading (ET) and Joint
Implementation (JI) were expected to be the biggest instruments and the Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM) the smallest one. However it turned out to be exactly opposite [3].
The great danger in ET of the “hot air” has shown not to be serious for the carbon market – countries have
only been willing to buy it when it is connected with a Green Investment Scheme (GIS). Until now about 275
MtCO2 has been sold by Russia, Ukraine and the Eastern European countries [102]. In a coming climate
regime the carryover of this hot air to future commitment periods must be excluded or at least reduced
drastically.
JI projects started first to be submitted (under track 2) in the autumn 2006 and since then around 10 new JI
project have been submitted monthly to the UNFCCC. The total GHG reduction under JI until the end of
2012 is expected only to be about a quarter of CDM. In 2008 track 1 projects started to be submitted and
now there are more track 1 projects (274) than track 2 projects (218). It has been easy to get the
information about Track 2 projects to our JIPipeline, since these projects must be approved by the Joint
Implementation Supervisory Committee (JISC) and are obliged to publish all information in English on the
UNFCCC JI website. But for track 1, where projects are approved bilaterally, there is not the same obligation
to publish information, so it is often missing: documents are often missing and not always in English,
information about issuance of ERUs lacking etc. Domestic JI that is starting in some European countries are
an interesting new development and in the future climate change regime JI could be a good option for
trading between countries with an emission cap. However, the two tracks should be merged to one.
For CDM It took about 3 years from 2004 to 2007 to get the number of new CDM projects submitted to the
UNFCCC up to about 100 per month. It stayed at that level until the spring of 2011 where a new surge
started with the monthly number of new CDM project increasing to about 200 in the autumn of 2011 and
even 268 new projects submitted in November 2011. In the beginning it took about a year from the start of
the validation to get a CDM project registered, but after some criticism that non-additional projects were
registered up to 70% of the CDM project went into the review cycle and other delays thereby prolonging
the time to get a project registered to about two years. This became a learning process for the CDM actors
resulting in that the quality of the PDDs increased, the validators got more experience, the UNFCCC
Secretariat and the Executive Board speeded up the procedures. The result was that we are now again
down to about a year for this process [102].
It is often mentioned in the post-2012 discussions that in order to reach the 2⁰C goal the GHG reductions
need must be much larger that the CDM can manage and that approaches to do mitigation in a whole
sector instead of in a single project is needed. This is however already possible with Programmatic CDM. In
2007 the first Program of Activities (PoA) was submitted to the UNFCCC. In a PoA an unlimited number of
CDM project can be included over a period of 28 tears, and the cost of inclusion of CDM projects in the PoA
will be much lower than the cost of registration of a normal CDM project; this reduces the transaction cost
so much that it is possible to construct and submit smaller CDM projects. Programmatic CDM is now on a
growth curve like the CDM was in the beginning, and the number of monthly PoAs submitted has grown
from about two in the beginning to more than 15 now [102].
There has been an unequal distribution of CDM projects among host countries. However over time more
and more countries are participating in the CDM. The number of CDM project in Africa has e.g. steadily
growing and are now about 2.6% of the total, but 25% of the PoAs are in Africa [102] – so also here
Programmatic CDM is solving some of the problems in CDM. In addition the share of projects for some of
the project types with few projects has increased for PoAs: the Share of Solar PoAs is 16% (compared to 2%
for normal CDM), and the share of Demand-side Energy Efficiency is 30% (compared to 4% for normal
CDM).
Many building blocks for the coming climate regime have been constructed in CDM and JI. There are now
190 approved CDM methodologies for different project types. The standardized baselines, which have
started to be developed under the CDM, can be useful in the new mechanisms to be discussed in the
negotiations. These methodologies also contain monitoring methodologies. About 40 different Designated
Operation Entities (DOEs) have been accredited to validate the CDM projects. All this can be important in
the construction of the rules for the Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) of the coming National
Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), which are being discussed in the climate negotiations. The CDM
has also trained as lot of stakeholders, consultants writing Projects document, companies and ministries in
possible ways of making GHG reductions, making it easier for the countries to develop their Low carbon
Development Strategies (LCDS).
In the Bali Action Plan two negotiation tracks were formed: the Long-term cooperative Action (LCA) track
and the Kyoto-Protocol (KP) track. These two tracks are now after COP17 in Durban unified into the Ad Hoc
Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. The Working group shall complete its work as
early as possible but no later than 2015 in order to adopt a new protocol, legal instrument or legal outcome
at in 2015 for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.
It is important that the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action in the future
negotiations is using the Kyoto Protocol as a stepping stone, building on all the important knowledge
gained from the work in CDM and JI.
Bibliography.
1. IPCC AR4 WG3 (2007), Metz, B.; Davidson, O.R.; Bosch, P.R.; Dave, R.; and Meyer, L.A., ed., Climate
Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change, Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press.
2. UNEP (2010). The Emission Gap Report. Are the Copenhagen Accord Pledges sufficient to limit
global warming to 2⁰ C or 1.5⁰ C.
www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/emissionsgapreport/pdfs/GAP_REPORT_SUNDAY_SINGLES_LO
WRES.pdf
3. Michaelowa, A. The future integration of projects in sectoral and policy-based crediting.
Presentation at Combining Cap and trade with Offsets. The Climate Economics Chair, Paris 20-21
June 2011.
www.chaireeconomieduclimat.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/S4-2-Michaelowa_Futureintegration-in-sectoral-and-policy-crediting.pdf
Websites
This UNEP site contains all the pledges made by countries and an calculation of the impact of the global
GHG emissions in 2020 and 2050
[101] www.unep.org/climatepledges
The monthly status of the flexible Mechanisms in the Kyoto protocol, published by UNEP Risoe
[102] www.cdmpipeline.org of 1. December 2011