Kyoto-era carbon credits will not repay our debt to the climate

The author contends that outdated Kyoto-era carbon credits lack environmental integrity and that reviving the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would not benefit the climate. The text highlights the lack of legal basis for continuing the CDM after 2020 and notes the significant uncertainty regarding the volume of existing credits, with estimates ranging from 300 million to over 4 billion CERs.

• The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has produced hundreds of millions of credits from over 8,000 projects, most of which lack environmental integrity because they would have occurred without the financial support from credit sales.
• There is significant discrepancy in the estimated number of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) available for transition; the UNFCCC secretariat estimates between 300 million and 2.3 billion, while German and Japanese research institutes suggest the total exceeds 4 billion.
• The Kyoto Protocol provides no legal basis for the CDM to continue issuing credits for emission reductions occurring after 2020, leading the CDM Executive Board to stop registering new projects or issuing credits for post-2020 reductions.
• Countries where the majority of CDM projects are located, specifically India, Brazil, and China, are the strongest advocates for the full transfer of CERs into the new system.

APA

Dufrasne, G. (2021). Kyoto-era carbon credits will not repay our debt to the climate. Carbon Market Watch. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2021/10/28/kyoto-era-carbon-credits-will-not-repay-our-debt-to-the-climate/

Chicago

Dufrasne, Gilles. Kyoto-era carbon credits will not repay our debt to the climate. Carbon Market Watch, 2021. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2021/10/28/kyoto-era-carbon-credits-will-not-repay-our-debt-to-the-climate/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Dufrasne |first1=Gilles |title=Kyoto-era carbon credits will not repay our debt to the climate |publisher=Carbon Market Watch |date=28 October 2021 |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2021/10/28/kyoto-era-carbon-credits-will-not-repay-our-debt-to-the-climate/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{dufrasne2021kyotoera, author = {Dufrasne, Gilles}, title = {{Kyoto-era carbon credits will not repay our debt to the climate}}, publisher = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2021}, month = oct, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2021/10/28/kyoto-era-carbon-credits-will-not-repay-our-debt-to-the-climate/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }