Russia submits "breakthrough" carbon-cutting project

Russia yesterday submitted for registration its first emission reduction project under a new procedure designed to bolster confidence in the UN-backed Joint Implementation (JI) carbon offsetting mechanism while increasing the number of projects authorised to issue carbon credits under the scheme.

The UN's climate change secretariat, which is responsible for the running of the JI, said the Russian government had submitted its first project under the so-called Track 2 procedure, which unlike the previous verification regime requires projects to comply with verification procedures supervised by the Joint Implementation Supervisory Committee (JISC).

The project in question will see an energy-efficient combined cycle gas turbine installed at the Shaturskaya Thermal Power Plant near Moscow. It is one of 15 JI projects that received the green light from the Russian Government at the end of July, and is the first to make use of the new Track 2 verification procedure.

Under the existing Track 1 procedure, emission reduction projects require approval from host countries – an arrangement that has led to bottlenecks in projects gaining approval and accusations from some quarters that a number of projects were getting away with failing to deliver promised emission reductions.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat hailed the news as a "much anticipated and very welcome development", adding that it represented another " clear sign that JI has an important role to play in directing investment to emission reduction in industrialised countries".

The JI operates along similar lines to the UN-backed Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), but while the CDM issues carbon credits from projects in the developing world the JI is designed for emission reduction projects in industrialised countries.

As a result, the JI has always been significantly smaller than the CDM with investors preferring projects in the developing world that can typically deliver emission reductions and more carbon credits at a lower cost.

However, the number of JI projects has been expanding in Russia, Ukraine and Central and Eastern Europe and according to the UNFCCC there are now 234 Track 2 projects in the JI pipeline and a further 177 Track 1 projects registered, accounting for potential emission reductions of around 500 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

The secretariat signalled yesterday that the emergence of the track 2 procedure has the potential to deliver a "substantial increase" in the number of projects approved under the JI.

"This is an extremely positive first step, considering that Russia is the country with the largest potential for JI," said JISC Chair Benoît Leguet. "The carbon community has been waiting for this for four years, since the JISC launched the Track 2 procedure."