Oct. 6, 2020 — London: The panel overseeing the main United Nations carbon market delayed key decisions that would have overcome a potential gap in the market’s operation at the end of the year.

The Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board considered the implications of the postponement of UN climate talks to November next year because of the coronavirus pandemic, it said in a report detailing the outcome of meetings that took place during the past two weeks in Bonn and virtually.

The panel would further consider at a meeting scheduled through Dec. 14 whether emission credits generated “on or after” Jan. 1 can be approved in the first 10 months of next year, it said.

The market has suffered weak demand for years and now the one-year delay in the global climate talks in Glasgow to November 2021 is causing further complications for the regulators. The impact of the virus means the market may have to halt at least some of its operations. Investors and project developers face rising uncertainty on what will happen to their projects for those months.

The panel did provide some certainty that pre-2021 emission reductions could still be processed.

Audit firms handling requests from emission-reduction projects in the market will continue as “provisionally designated,” until November next year, when further guidance may be provided by the Glasgow talks, it said. Requirements by regulators of the firms “would remain the same.”

“The submission and processing of requests for issuance related to emission reductions or removals achieved before or on 31 December 2020 will continue in accordance with the current CDM requirements.”

See link to meeting report: https://cdm.unfccc.int/filestorage/B/M/A/BMA50YE79VSQIU1GLRWKCJZODNF3P4/CDM_EB107_meeting_report.pdf?t=WUx8cWhyNDQwfDAf-9hPU1s2MPVaVC5pOjM0

See link to earlier story:
https://carrzee.org/looming-deadline-tomorrow-sadly-amounts-to-yet-another-threat-to-global-climate-negotiations/