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To put that in perspective, the projects amount to less than 1 percent of more than 1 300 projects worldwide that have been registered with the CDM, a carbon trading tool of the Kyoto protocol to reduce the gas emissions that cause climate change.
Africa as a whole doesn’t fare much better: only 28 projects have been registered from the continent so far.
Africa needs to ramp up its figures if it hopes to benefit from switching to lower-emissions production methods and energy generation. Developing countries can earn credits from emissions reduction projects and sell these on to countries with mandatory targets to cut emissions by the end of 2012.
The world is also eyeing a post-Kyoto treaty at the end of the year that could produce an expanded version of the CDM.
Africa has already wasted a lot of time getting to grips with carbon markets.
Capacity problems have naturally been a major constraint: the bureaucracy and time spent securing CDM go-ahead is daunting for the uninitiated.
So it’s rather good news that a unit of the state-owned Central Energy Fund, CEF Carbon South Africa, has teamed up with European partners to form a hub, offering comprehensive carbon trading solutions to African countries and trading as CarbonStream Africa.
While South Africa has some skills in carbon advisory services, CarbonStream Africa promises to accelerate emission reduction projects, assisted by international players who understand carbon markets.
Chief executive Deven Pillay says it unites the South African government, the private sector and local consultants with funding from international governments.
In the short term, more than 10 percent of all CDM projects should come from Africa, instead of the 2 percent to 3 percent the continent currently accounts for.
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on Nov 19th, 2009
@ 4:48 am:
Thanks for the useful infomation.
How do small companies dedicated for carbon reduction directly get support from the funders? We are commited to start serious ventures in carbon reduction.