DNV's Accreditation Reinstated

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The CDM Executive Board (EB), at its February meeting, reinstated the accreditation of DNV, the Norwegian certification company that has audited for CDM compliance a third of the projects submitted for EB approval. Back in the end of November I had reported that DNV was suspended for violating a number of rules.

At the same meeting, the EB rejected five projects. Guess who had audited these projects? You got it – DNV. It will be interesting to see at the next EB meeting if DNV's auditing procedures have improved after being forced to sit on the sidelines for the past two months. Although if your record is 0 for 5, it doesn't take much to claim better practices.

Sanjeev Kumar from WWF International in his guest commentary in Point Carbon (sub.req'd) points out that a major challenge to the CDM is ensuring that auditors only approve real emission reductions. Our research has shown that this unfortunately is an impossible task. Additionality testing is inherently subjective and inaccurate. As English journalist Dan Welch summarized, "offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened."