Challenges for energy efficiency improvement under the CDM—the case of energy-efficient lighting

The CDM under the Kyoto Protocol has so far been unable to mobilize activities of households and service industries to improve end-use energy efficiency. This is mainly due to the lack of or the cumbersome requirements of the few existing baseline and monitoring methodologies as well as the difficulty to prove project additionality. We assess methodologies for projects distributing compact fluorescent lamps to households. The approval of the first large-scale methodology took more than 2 years and in the interaction with the regulatory bodies, the methodology became very cumbersome, especially regarding monitoring requirements. Four sample groups are required and the technology that has to be used for measuring utilization of CFLs does not yet exist. Therefore, project developers are not applying the large-scale methodology but try to use the pre-defined small-scale methodology. But even the small-scale methodology requires a substantial amount of data and measurements. A “Programme of Activity” approach could reduce monitoring costs through limiting monitoring to a sample of projects. Moreover, monitoring experts could be trained and thus monitoring mistakes reduced compared to single project settings. A deemed savings methodology was recently approved which alleviates but does not completely eliminate monitoring needs. It considerably reduces CER volumes compared to the other two methodologies and thus project developers have to assess the trade-off between higher monitoring costs and lower CER volumes.