http://www.newenergyworldnetwork.com/renewable-energy-news/by-technology/energy-efficiency/cdm-proves-popular-with-3000-projects-but-future-remains-uncertain.html

One of the key facets of the globe’s only legally-binding covenants to tackle climate change, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), has registered 3,000 projects.

The mechanism is an international tool that channels investment into the clean energy space through endowing low carbon projects with carbon credits that can be used to offset higher emitting projects. Its life time is, however, threatened by the upcoming expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, unless the agreement is renewed.
Hopes of renewing the same system or an equivalent legally binding mechanism at the last United Nations (UN) conference in Mexico late last year were quashed when a non-legally binding deal was announced. The next conference of the parties at the end of the year will be the last opportunity for global leaders to restore the protocol or form a corresponding legally-binding agreement.
The year 2001 was the first year projects could be registered by the UN under the CDM, and the scheme is expected to run until the end of the Kyoto commitment period next year.
At the Cancun conference, although global governments generally agreed that tools such as the CDM have a role to play in climate action, its future is yet to be determined. These governments are now discussing possible further mechanisms that will help governments and business work together to redeploy sustainable resources, according to the UN, which has not yet rung the death knell on the mechanism, but neither has it given it the breath of life.
The latest project to be registered under the mechanism is a wind farm in Inner Mongolia in China, which is expected to reduce emissions by more than 101,000 tonnes a year. Early expectations for the CDM were that it would lead to the mitigation of 1.65 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in its lifetime, according to The World Bank’s World Development Report 2010.
If the Mongolia wind farm is anything to go by, the total mitigated emissions of the CDM will be come in at close to 303 million tonnes per year, or over three billion tonnes per decade, not counting the emissions that are offset by the credits. To this end, it has been largely successful, but a fatal flaw of the carbon credit system is that it still allows for emissions to be added to the atmosphere in the first place.
So the actual level of carbon emissions withdrawn or saved depends entirely on the offset exchange cap set by the UN, in other words the ratio between how much carbon one is allowed to produce for every carbon tonne avoided through a clean energy project.
The UN says governments founded the CDM on the clear principle that every CDM project must deliver a real and transparent reduction of carbon emissions in a way that contributes to sustainable development.
‘The Clean Development Mechanism is still evolving and will continue to do so. But from the original concept to now, it has been a success way beyond the initial expectations, not only in the number of projects but also in its ability to attract private sector investment into bettering livelihoods and environments of people in the developing world,’ said UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.
The UN said there are now CDM projects in 71 countries, with 2,600 in the vetting stage in addition to the 3,000 already registered. The number of projects beginning validation in the first three months of 2011 was 17 per cent higher than in the same period in 2010, the UN said.