Page 85 - Carbon Frauds and Corruption

Corruption of Bribery

Chapter 6 : Corruption in the “Carbon World”

consultants or with a Designated Operational Entity (or equivalent in the voluntary market) and
packaged for presentation to an authorising body such as the UNFCCC.

99
The flow of a typical offset project is as follows :

PROSPECTING
Proposal and Project Design Approved VALIDATION Host Country Registration Monitoring Verification Certification Issuance
Report for
Commercial Document Methodology Approval and Approval
Design First Period

Figure 6. 18: Project Flow. Further comments are made below on the unshaded cells

The ultimate cost of CERS is borne by taxpayers in Annex 1 countries, whose regulated power and
other carbon dioxide intensive industries buy them as “offsets” to comply with their
undertakings under Kyoto 100. The costs are then recovered from consumers through increased
prices. Although much glory has been claimed for the benefits that CDM projects bring to
underdeveloped nations, the evidence is counterfactual. The biggest winners have been
multinational companies, many of whom, while extolling their voluntary green credentials, have
relentlessly pursued CDM projects for financial gain.

12.2.2 Project Design Documents and Approved Methodologies
101
Under CDM, Approved Methodologies and Project Design Documents, are key. They set out the
way baseline emissions are calculated, the capacity of the project, the scheme for emissions
reduction and metrics. If an Approved Methodology does not already exist, the project’s
proposers or their technical advisers may submit one for consideration. There are currently
around 200 Approved CDM Methodologies in the following sectors:

99 Offset schemes under other regimes follow a similar pattern
100 The EU has placed a cap on the number of CERS that can be used for compliance purposes on the First Crediting
Period of 285,000,000 amounting to around 13% of emission reduction targets by LCPs. The UK has imposed a limit of
8%
101 And other voluntary certification and issuance regimes such as the Gold Standard

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