Open letters to companies involved in HFC-23 projects

Civil society organizations, including CDM Watch and EIA, sent open letters to various financial institutions and energy companies to express concerns over HFC-23 projects under the CDM. The letters argue that these projects lack environmental integrity, reward inefficient production, and create perverse incentives for the production of HCFC-22. The signatories call for changes to CDM methodology and the exclusion of these credits from the EU ETS.

• Civil society organizations argue that HFC-23 projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) lack environmental integrity, with data suggesting some manufacturers are manipulating the system to generate carbon credits that do not represent actual emission reductions.
• The current CDM system is criticized for rewarding projects with high HFC-23 production by not penalizing suboptimal waste gas production ratios, which has discouraged the use of more efficient technology and led to the creation of millions of 'phony credits'.
• The potential for high revenues from HFC-23 destruction is seen as a subsidy and incentive for the production of HCFC-22, a greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance of which HFC-23 is a by-product.
• In response to these concerns, the CDM Executive Board initiated an official investigation and suspended Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) for several HFC-23 projects, while the European Commission considered quality restrictions for industrial gas project credits in the post-2012 EU ETS.

APA

Carbon Market Watch (2010). Open letters to companies involved in HFC-23 projects. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/publications/open-letters-to-companies-involved-in-hfc-23-projects/

Chicago

Carbon Market Watch. Open letters to companies involved in HFC-23 projects. 2010. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/publications/open-letters-to-companies-involved-in-hfc-23-projects/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Carbon Market Watch |title=Open letters to companies involved in HFC-23 projects |date=18 November 2010 |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/publications/open-letters-to-companies-involved-in-hfc-23-projects/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{carbonmarketwatch2010open, author = {{Carbon Market Watch}}, title = {{Open letters to companies involved in HFC-23 projects}}, publisher = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2010}, month = nov, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/publications/open-letters-to-companies-involved-in-hfc-23-projects/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }