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Katy Yan

Campaigns Assistant

In my former life, I researched carbon footprints, integrated water management, and the intersection of art, activism and environmental education. Now as a blogger, I monitor the current carbon offsets craze, throwing in climate change and carbon financing to the web of interconnected earth systems that I explore, and in which we all belong.

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Trailing Large Hydro 2009: A Quarterly Update on the CDM

Mon, 04/06/2009 - 5:14pm

The world through the eyes of the CDM nerd.

Dovetailing my last blog on the decline of the CDM, I'm introducing a quarterly hydro CDM blog, which updates any CDM-nerds out there interested in the status of hydropower projects in the CDM. I also send out weekly email updates of CDM hydro projects and produce a monthly spreadsheet for your research and gleaning pleasure.

Updates:

Projects Entering the CDM Pipeline
This first quarter's update shows a clear decline in the number of CDM projects being submitted for public comment (the first stage of the CDM's formal project approval process). The number of hydro projects being submitted for comments appears to be dropping rapidly since peaking in 2007 (see right).
While many hydro projects are still being registered, a significant number are undergoing review and corrections, and several have been outright rejected. The CDM Executive Board recently rejected four hydro projects that had been validated by TUV-SUD (see the UNFCCC list).
Number of Hydro Projects at Various Stages Over Time
Of the hydro projects that have requested registration, 69% have eventually been registered.
Note that figures are based on the UNEP Risoe CDM/JI Pipeline Analysis and Database, which has a number of hydro projects without any updated status. These are what I'd like to call "in limbo" projects, trapped seemingly indefinitely in the black holes in the CDM project approval process.