Kyoto projects harm ozone layer

Yet another reason to be certain you know where your offsets are coming from. Reuters reports:

The biggest emissions-cutting projects under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming have directly contributed to an increase in the production of gases that destroy the ozone layer, a senior U.N. official says.

In addition, evidence suggests that the same projects, in developing countries, have deliberately raised their emissions of greenhouse gases only to destroy these and therefore claim more carbon credits, said Stanford University’s Michael Wara.

The whole article is worth reading since it goes into sordid detail about the counterproductive gaming of the system. In general, I am not a fan of many Clean Development Mechanism offsets, since you run into huge additionality and leakage problems.

The Gold Standard, an international standard for offsets, is wise not to allow such industrial offset projects.