Successfully Leveraging Gas Flaring Reduction through the CDM – Overcoming Methodological Barriers

Abstract

Abstract There are over 1,900 projects registered under the Clean Developing Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, with an annual average reduction of nearly 300 million tCO2eq. The last data published by Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFRP) show that over 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas are being flared and vented annually, accounting for over 400 million tCO2eq in annual emissions. However, today there are only 8 gas flaring reduction projects registered with annual expected reductions of just over 7.8 million tCO2eq. There are many possible reasons for this clear mismatch between the huge gas flaring reduction potential and its presence in the CDM, although we believe, and will try to demonstrate along the paper based on our experience, that the lack of a clear and universal methodology that embraces all the different possible projects under "gas flaring reduction" is a major hurdle. In this paper we will analyse in detail the five current existing methodologies (AM0009, AM0037, AM0055, AM0074 and AM0077) that try to cover the gas flaring reduction field. We will go through the difficulties in their application and show the different CER generation result they produce. The analysis will be done through two concrete examples which cover significant examples of widespread project types that can be encountered in the O&G industry. Finally, the effect on the applicability of these methodologies of expected CDM progress towards sectoral approaches will be hinted.