UN Stops CDM Credits to China Wind Industry

It’s tough to lend a helping hand when you’re not sure what’s happened to your hand afterward. It’s just recently been revealed that the United Nations board that approves issuance of credits for carbon trading to developing countries has since the summer stopped providing credits to Chinese manufacturers in the wind power generation industry. Apparently, the UN has issued nearly US$1 billion to Chinese companies in a bid to help the companies build wind farms that would not have been built without the credits. The credits trade on international bourses, like stocks, and have real value. They are one of the developed world’s ways of helping modernizing countries curb power generation projects that produce a great deal of carbon-related pollution. The UN has refused approval on 50 Chinese projects.

China has received over 50% of the carbon credits the past five years, while at the same time ramming up wind turbines at an ever-increasing volume each year. Suppliers for turbines have gone from over 95% foreign-owned in 2000 to nearly 60% domestic suppliers in 2007. European manufacturers in particular such as Vestas and Siemens have been crying foul the past year in the face of a projects-bidding system they claim the State has rigged against international players.

Indeed, the largest wind turbine producers in China were unbundled from State Owned utilities companies, and are still heavily guided by the State: Guodian, Datang, Huadian, CPI and Huaneng produce more than half the wind turbines in China today, according to the Danish Wind Energy Development Program.

So, one can only imagine international wind turbine manufacturers sighing a bit of relief at the UN moratorium. With governance and shareholdings in large Chinese companies that have heavy State legacies as opaque as the smoke that billows from coal-powered generators, it may be some time before the UN actually figures out where the credits are going, and whether they’ve done any good.

Read More: FT