This was a technical training session, aimed at a technical audience, scheduled for 8:30 in the morning. As a result, I expected only a dozen or so hard-core enthusiasts to attend, and was very pleased to find a standing-room-only crowd of 70-80 people eager to discuss how to implement this exciting class of carbon projects.
The content of the session was considerably more technical than the norm for this blog, so I'll preface my overview with a quick summary of the alphabet soup of acronyms we used on the day:
- PoA: Programme of Activities (a collection of thematically and legally linked CPAs)
- CPA: CDM Project Activity (the component projects within a PoA)
- PoA-DD: Programme of Activity Design Document
- CPA-DD: CPA Design Document
- CME: Coordinating Management Entity (the organisation running the PoA)
- EB: Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board
- DOE: Designated Operational Entity (the CDM accredited PoA/CPA auditor
Chaired by Alexandra Soezer from the United Nations Environment Program, the training featured four presenters. I started off by reviewing the various PoA-related rule changes imposed by the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board at their December 2011 meeting, and discussing how those changes affect the Coordinating Managment Entities (CMEs). The next speaker ran through the various legal permutations for how the CMEs can implement multiple CPAs. The third speaker presented a case study for a cook stove PoA that is underway in Nigeria, with an emphasis on the practical challenges of running these decentralised projects in developing countries. The fourth speaker represented a DOE charged with auditing PoAs, and described what they look for to ensure environmental integrity and compliance with the Executive Board rules.
A copy of my presentation can be found here.
