In the light of the development of the Malaysian forestry sector in recent years, the article gives an overview over the current discussions around the inclusion of biological carbon sink projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, like forest definitions,...

Indonesia currently ranks as the world's 17th oil and 6th gas producer, but its production levels are slowly declining. In Indonesia, the oil companies may extract, process and market associated gas jointly with the State Oil and Gas Board. In addition, they are allowed to use associated gas in...

Research efforts towards new energy sources and towards the efficiency of energy use will be vital to reducing CO2 abatement costs in the long term. Can such efforts be induced by price instruments? Economists often cite induced technological change as a possible consequence of environmental...

German wind power development is a technological success story but has involved very high subsidies. Germany was a latecomer in wind power but specific political conditions in the late 1980s and early 1990s allowed the implementation of the feed in tariff regime which has characterised Germany...

Indian economic growth is likely to lead to a huge increase of energy use in buildings but so far, policies to address this issue are lacking. Standard building energy use concerning glazing, air conditioning and lighting in different climatic zones across India leads to energy use per m2 which...

As part of the international climate negotiations there is a lot of discussion about methodologies for quantifying emission reductions of greenhouse gas reduction projects (baseline discussion) and about granting emission reduction credits only to projects that are additional (Investment...

After Future climate policy regimes may be based on the Kyoto-Protocol or on other policy instruments such as carbon-taxes. Any effective regime based on the Protocol requires the determination of the concrete contributions by each Party. This involves namely the time of contribution and the...

International climate negotiations have specified that projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) should not lead to a "diversion" of official development assistance (ODA). It is however unchallenged that ODA can be used in capacity building for the CDM. Diversion can be interpreted in...

Afforestation and reforestation (AR) projects in the Clean Development Mechanism are able to create emission permits that can be accounted against the industrialized countries' commitments for limiting their greenhouse gas emissions, as agreed under the Kyoto Protocol. The discussion of how to...