Clean Development Mechanism: A Key to Sustainable Development - Environmental Sustainability: Role of Green Technologies - page 120

Table 2 Renewable energy power generation, 2012 (units in GW) (Renewable Global Status Report 2013 )

The United
States

World's
total

EU a -27 China Germany Spain Italy India

Source

Wind power 106 75 60 31 23 8.1 18.4 283

Hydropower 119 229 78 4.4 17 18 43 990

Solar power (PV) 69 7 7.2 32 5.1 16.4 1.2 100

Biopower 31 8 15 7.6 1 3.8 4 83

Geothermal power 0.9 - 3.4 - - 0.9 - 11.7

Tidal power 0.2 - - - - - - 0.5

Concentrating solar
thermal power (CSP)

2 - 0.5 - 2 - - 2.5

Total 330 319 164 76 48 47 67 1,470

a European Union

Fig. 4

Top fi ve countries on the basis of issued CERs

emission trading so that emissions can be reduced
considerably.
All the developed countries are now trying to
get CERs to follow the Kyoto Protocol by pro-
moting CDM projects. With the help of high
amounts of CERs, countries can run their
business- as-usual projects. Consequently , there is
a noticeable growth in the establishment of CDM
projects; with this the trouble of high GHG emis-
sions can be reduced. Figure 4 shows top fi ve
countries on the basis of issued CERs. China has
the highest CERs, leading with 857.4 million
CERs, followed by India, South Korea, Brazil
and Mexico. The increase in the number of CDM
projects registered throughout the world year by
year is a good sign in the path to sustainable
development ( www.cdmpipeline.org ) .

3 Barriers in CDM

Before implementing a CDM project, an estima-
tion of emissions reduction is done which is
then verifi ed by a DOE. Monitoring of emis-
sions is the fi fth stage of the CDM project cycle
as shown in Fig. 3 in which a project developer
estimates the total emissions reduction of a proj-
ect. After this stage, a DOE verifi es the emis-
sions reduction claimed by the project developer.
But an important thing arises here: on what
basis or standard does a DOE verify the claimed
emissions reduction of the developer? That is
why some standard or basis is essentially
required for better verifi cation of emissions
reduction.