Chinese Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects have overtaken Indian schemes in terms of the number of Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits validated and issued by the UN’s CDM executive board.

Chart 1 - cumulative carbon credits issued in China and India

While China has long been ahead of India in terms of potential carbon credits generated by registered projects, India has dominated actual CER issue since January 2006.

But a bumper start to 2008 for China saw over 10 million CERs issued in January, accounting for over 90% of all CERs issued that month (chart 2). These credits, stemming from just four chemical plant HFC23 destruction projects, pushed China into first place in the issued carbon credit leaderboard for the first time since the CDM programme began.

According to the UNFCCC, China will account for nearly half of all CERs issued worldwide once all registered projects begin generating validated CERs (see chart 3).

Chart 4 shows the 12-16 month lag between a project’s registration and the issuance of carbon credits in China.

Chart 2 - carbon credits issued in January 2008

Chart 3 - China accounts for half registered credits

Chart 4 - carbon credit issue lag in China