Abstract
It has been frequently observed that a substantially lower amount of credits has been issued in comparison to what was initially estimated for CDM project activities in the field of waste handling and disposal. This paper focuses on landfill gas recovery, which is a main component of CDM project activities for waste handling and disposal. The current status of credit issuances and models for estimating baseline emissions are presented, and the factors contributing to a depression in credit issuances are discussed. As a result of this study, the median for the credit issuance rate regarding landfill gas recovery CDM project activities was 26.7%. The credit issuance rate is considered to be greatly effected by the setting of parameters, while the rate is less affected by selection of the estimation model. Estimation of greenhouse gas emissions in CDM project activities is currently highly dependent on limited data of uncertain reliability, or on the default parameters proposed by IPCC. Referring to such limited data and parameters, without adequate assessment of the current status of project sites, will certainly result in unrealistic emission estimations.
