It comes as no surprise that a broad-based coalition of activists are calling the bluff of 19 companies earning carbon offset credits through the Carbon Development Mechanism created by the Kyoto Protocol. The activists accuse the companies, based largely in China and India, of creating greenhouse gas emissions for the sole purpose of earning credits from destroying them.
According to a review by E&E News (subs. Req'd):
"Sometimes they produce gas just to burn it and get some CDM money, and it's not at all an honest way of behaving," said Chaim Nissim, an engineer with Noe21, a Geneva-based climate change advocacy organization that has researched carbon offsetting projects at industrial gas companies.
"It's fake," Nissim said.
CDM officials say they are investigating the allegations...
With countries still unable to negotiate a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol, the future of the entire CDM is in limbo. No one could say what it meant for the carbon market as a whole if it is indeed determined that one third of the whole volume of CERs don't represent any actually abated or avoided greenhouse gas emissions.
Breakthrough has long pointed to the dubious nature of carbon offsets that have offered an all too convenient policy out for legislators crafting legislation while hoping to avoid blowback from the business world and has covered the suspensions of at least three carbon offset auditors, a forest offsets scam reported by Greenpeace, and the problems with carbon offsets included in proposed U.S. climate and energy legislation.
