International approval of two Japanese projects for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries was postponed for further review due to concerns they might increase emissions of a different greenhouse gas, climate change secretariat sources said Monday.
The Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism met last week in Buenos Aires to consider the projects, but its members decided to delay a decision on whether to register them until the next board meeting in January, the sources said.
The validity of the methods for reducing greenhouse gases outlined in the projects will also be discussed at the 10th Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP 10. It got under way Monday and is scheduled to run through Dec. 17 in the Argentine capital.
If approved, the projects would be the first involving Japan under the clean development mechanism of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for curbing global warming.
Trading house Sumitomo Corp. and two foreign companies proposed one project for activities in India.
INEOS Fluor Japan Ltd., the Japanese unit of British chemical business INEOS Group, proposed the other for work in South Korea.
Both projects call for collecting and destroying hydrofluorocarbon 23, a greenhouse gas that is generated in the course of producing hydrochlorofluorocarbon 22, which is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol.
But experts have informed the CDM Executive Board that HCFC is also a potent greenhouse gas known to destroy the stratospheric ozone layer and is among the regulated substances under the Montreal Protocol.