CDM waiting times could be reduced even further
A cut in waiting time for carbon project registration and issuance, down to an average of just 30 days, could be reduced further to a little over seven days, Christiaan Vrolijk, from the Carbon Markets & Investors Association (CMIA), told ICIS Heren on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the UN said it had reduced the registration and issuance waiting time for CDM projects from an average of 90 days to 30 days (see EDCM 5 January 2010). In order to do this, the body had to hire nearly 30 temporary staff to clear a backlog.
The 30-day waiting time is still double the length in time that is recommended by the Kyoto mechanism's governing conference of parties, however.
The reforms introduced by the regulator of the clean development mechanism (CDM) have nevertheless exceeded CMIA's expectations, as the association had not expected a significant drop in registration and issuance waiting times until the middle of this year, on the basis of past performance.
Vrolijk, who is vice chair of the association's financial mechanisms and international architecture working group, warned that for further cuts in waiting times, more would need to be done by the executive board (EB) of the CDM.
"We strongly encourage the EB to carry on aggressively with its reforms," he said.
Vrolijk told ICIS Heren that if the level of input seen in clearing the backlog during December continued for another month or so, waiting times could be reduced to a week.
Completeness checks
Although CMIA on Thursday congratulated the CDM regulator on the work it had done so far, it also highlighted that completeness checks of projects also still stood at 30 days.
In total, this means that it still takes two months from the time a project is submitted and registration fees are paid until the project is published online for registration.
Vrolijk said this length of time could also be drastically reduced with more - and, he emphasised, much-appreciated - hard work from the EB. Individual project completeness checks "should be measured in hours, not days in all but exceptional circumstances", he said.
The whole matter of individual waiting times for each step - be it for registration, issuance or completeness - should, nevertheless, not be a factor at all.
Instead, the critical waiting time should be the whole process from submission and payment of fees to the conclusion of checks and official listing of project online, Vrolijk said.
However, following the decision in Cancún to backdate the registration to the date of submission, even this delay will become slightly less important.
It was only because delays were lasting over 100 days in some cases that the minutiae of the stages were taken into consideration.
Spread widening
Issuance of certified emissions reductions (CERs) in recent weeks has been significantly higher than usual, as a result of the work of the EB.
During 2010, the weekly issuance average stood at 2.5m. In the last three weeks of the year, this figure had been notably higher, however - in some cases, as many as 10.7m CERs.
The result of this uptick in issuance has been the widening of the EU allowance (EUA)-CER spread. On Thursday evening, the Year 2011 spread stood at €3.45/tonne of CO2 equivalent - the widest it has been in over three weeks. TMM
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