Business Times 15 Dec 08;
(BANGKOK) Malaysia ranks third in Asia with 145 projects worth US$274 million lined up this year, according to the year-end snapshot of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol - the United Nations (UN) emission- reduction treaty.
The CDM projects running or in the pipeline in Malaysia represent 3.4 per cent of the global share, and showed a steady rise from just two projects in 2004 to seven in 2005, 23 in 2006 and 93 last year.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said last Friday that more than 4,200 projects were up and running, or in various phases of the pipeline across the globe in 2008, with China, India, Brazil and Mexico continuing to grab the lion's share with a total of 3,218 projects.
China topped the chart with 1,557, or 36.7 per cent of the global share, followed by 1,135 for India. The countries with the least projects are Fiji, Laos and Papua New Guinea with just one apiece.
Wind and geothermal power projects alongside those promoting energy efficiency and even the preservation of onions are emerging across the globe, courtesy of the UN-brokered carbon markets.
Leading are medium and small-scale hydroelectric projects, followed by biomass energy, wind power and electricity from industrial waste heat, while the CDM is also now triggering interest in a wider range of renewable energy projects, including solar and geothermal power, and one 250 MW tidal project in South Korea.
One novel project is emerging from Niger where an estimated 60 per cent of the national onion crop can be lost, leading to methane emissions as the vegetables rot. The idea is to use solar dryers and other systems to preserve the onions so that they do not rot in storage or on the way to the market. -- Bernama
