6 January 2010: The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has registered its 2,000th project, a biogas extraction and utilization project in Thailand, expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 56,000 tons annually.
The first CDM project was registered on 18 November 2004, and this 2,000th project was registered two years after the 1,000th project was registered. CDM Executive Board Chair Lex de Jonge remarked on this milestone, saying that “it is fascinating to look back at how we started, and consider how far we have come. It is heartening to see the pace of registrations picking up such that the 2,000th project gets registered in less than two years.” With hopes of reaching the 3,000 project mark within an even shorter time, the Executive Board will be taking a number of actions to speed up the registration process, including amending its timelines and the review process as mandated by the fifth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 5) in December 2009, as well as ensuring that issues with incoming requests for registration are handled as efficiently as possible and that adequate resources are available to process the new requests in a timely manner. [UNFCCC Press Release]