Jiankun He

December 2008

"Possible Development of a Technology Clean Development Mechanism in a Post-2012 Regime"

Discussion Paper

By Fei Teng, Wenying Chen and Jiankun He

In the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was set up by Article 12 to achieve two-fold objectives: to help Annex I countries to meet their emission targets in a cost-effective way and to support non-Annex I countries in achieving the goal of sustainable development. Although technology transfer is not a requirement for CDM, experience shows that CDM may contribute significantly to technology transfer. However, it is difficult to induce large-scale technology transfer through CDM in its present form. The project-specific nature of CDM leads to high transaction costs and makes it difficult to create economies of scale and pool risks across projects of the same type. Thus CDM is not effective in attracting more low-carbon investors. The CDM does not address the competitiveness concerns of the private sector in developed countries.This paper addresses these challenging issues by proposing an enhanced CDM regime with greater emphasis on technology transfer from developed countries to developing countries.