En stor del af de projekter, som rige lande støtter for selv at opnå klimakredit, ville have været gennemført alligevel, konkluderer Stockholm Environment Institute.
Dermed er det eneste resultat af disse projekter, at der bliver udledt mere CO2.
Det skriver Stockholm Environment Institute i en pressemeddelelse mandag:
Joint Implementation is one of two offsetting mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, along with the Clean Development Mechanism.
It enables countries with emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to generate Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) from greenhouse gas reduction projects and transfer them to other countries. As of March 2015, almost 872 million ERUs had been issued under JI.
But while JI is meant to support climate change mitigation by making it more cost-effective, a new SEI study shows that it seriously undermined global climate action.
In a random sample of 60 JI projects, 73% of the offsets came from projects for which additionality was not plausible – that is, the projects would likely have proceeded even without carbon revenues.
The study also examined the six largest project types across JI, and found only one, N2O abatement from nitric acid production, had overall high environmental integrity – meaning the projects were likely to be truly additional and not overcredited.
Altogether, the study found that about 80% of ERUs issued came from project types of low or questionable environmental integrity.
The design of JI is meant to safeguard against non-additional projects: Host countries must cancel one of their emission allowances for every ERU issued.
But the study found more than 95% of ERUs were issued by countries with significant surpluses of allowances. If those countries issued non-additional ERUs, they would not have to make up the difference by further reducing emissions at home.
Thus, ERUs worth about 600 Mt CO2e issued as of March 2015 may not represent actual emission reductions.
The implications are particularly serious for the EU Emissions Trading System,” says Anja Kollmuss, an SEI associate who led the study.
“Almost two-thirds of JI credits were used in the EU ETS, so the poor overall quality of JI projects may have undermined the EU’s emission reduction target by some 400 Mt CO2e. For context, that is about a third of the emission reductions required by the EU ETS from 2013 to 2020.”
Læs videre og download rapporten på Stockholm Environment Institute’s hjemmeside:
http://www.sei-international.org/news-and-media/3196
