Kicking off the Revision of CDM Rules for “Waste-to-Energy” (WTE)
As part of a global coalition including grassroots recyclers and allied groups, GAIA is campaigning to stop the flow of carbon credits to incinerators and landfills. For the past several months we have been pushing for the revision of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) rules that apply to waste projects, and in May the CDM Board formally agreed to revise these methodologies. This is great news that reaffirms the critical opportunity we have to question and cease the inclusion of WTE under the carbon market umbrella. Such inclusion has supported end-of-pipe technologies in the Global South that severely impact waste picker communities, recycling programs, and the environment for the last decade. Ultimately, the CDM’s stamp of approval for incinerators means that other polluting industries in the Global North can shy away from their obligations to cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through buying carbon credits generated from burning waste.
At the moment, there are 25 incinerators within the CDM project cycle, 16 of which are under discussion for approval. Most of these incinerators are in China, a country with an unprecedented increase in waste, consisting mainly of organics that will not burn on their own. They require added auxiliary fuels to function—so that carbon offsets are absurdly being given to technologies that ultimate use fossil fuels to burn wastes for which better treatment methods are readily available. The CDM also supports the development of Refuse-Derived Fuel plants, mainly in India, which are usually associated with incinerators or cement kilns. The endless list of environmental and health problems associated to these burning technologies makes a mockery of the CDM’s environmental integrity policy.
Landfill gas systems—predominantly in Latin America but also in the Asia and Pacific region—are another major technology that is increasingly found in the CDM pipeline. Projects that capture landfill gas to flare or to produce energy account for 85% of all projects affected by the rules revision process that the CDM is undertaking. While open landfills are in need of solutions to prevent methane emissions and other toxic releases, the establishment of a market mechanism to capture the landfill gas makes its production so profitable that rather than aiming to neutralize methane emissions, landfill managers end up having incentives to attempt to increase them through all sorts of tricks. These include, but are not limited to recirculating leachate or adding water to the landfill; reducing the well suction to prevent oxygen entering the landfill and oxygenation of the waste; and shutting off wells to allow methane to build up. These practices not only generate more methane, but also degrade the methane collection pipes, causing a greater proportion of that methane to escape into the atmosphere. So, ironically enough, the landfill gas systems supported by the CDM result in an increase of methane emissions.
Furthermore, one of the most striking flaws of the CDM regulations for waste projects is that they do not take into account their impact to already existing recycling rates, particularly those resulting from the informal recycling sector. All over the Global South, communities of waste pickers are threatened by the CDM’s promotion of waste-of-energy technologies, which compete with their access to recyclable materials. This creates significant negative economic impacts on the waste pickers themselves as well as the entire economy that depends on their work—the aggregators, wholesalers, resalers, and remanufacturers.
In light of these problems, GAIA and the South African Waste Pickers Association, the Red Latinoamericana de Recicladores (REDLACRE) and the Alliance of Indian Wastepickers (AIW) have put together a joint submission to contribute to the process of revising the CDM regulations and make sure that our concerns are taken into account. The documents will be made accessible through the GAIA website shortly, but they are already available upon request.
Furthermore, we are engaged in additional work to raise awareness of the impacts of the CDM: developing case studies in India, the Philippines, and China to illustrate specific impacts of CDM projects in communities and ecosystems; mapping CDM projects that need to be challenged; producing a policy briefing that will provide concrete data about the CDM; and much, much more…so, stay tuned! A call for action is coming very soon!!
For more information about the CDM and waste projects, see GAIA's factsheet. To learn more about the coalition’s work on global climate policy click here.
