Wind Farm in India is 500th Kyoto Project in a Developing Country

February 14, 2007

The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) announced on February 12th that an 8.75-megawatt wind facility in Gujurat, India, is the 500th project to be registered under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The Kyoto Protocol specifies greenhouse gas reduction requirements for its participating countries, but allows countries to earn credits toward those requirements through emissions-reducing investments in developing countries. Even though developing countries don't have specific reduction goals, the CDM helps reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in those countries. The United States is not participating in the Kyoto Protocol.

According to the UNFCCC, CDM projects are being conducted in more than 40 countries and have so far generated more than 31 million certified emission reduction units, each of which is equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide. The leading countries for CDM projects are, in order, India, Brazil, Mexico, and China. The UNFCCC expects the CDM to help avoid more than 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2012, which marks the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. That amount of carbon dioxide is equivalent to the combined annual emissions of Canada, France, Spain, and Switzerland. See the UNFCCC press release (PDF 163 KB). Download Adobe Reader.