Flavio Gomes, Global Product Manager in charge of for environmental, health, safety and social responsibility, will present the different protocols linked to climate change.

The main three “trading” mechanisms, or protocols, are the Clean Development Mechanisms, Joint Implementation and the International Emissions scheme. How were these created?
These three mechanisms are recognized and defined by the Kyoto protocol which is the protocol defined under the United Nations convention on climate change that defines targets for developed countries in terms of emissions of greenhouse gas reductions. So this protocol, besides establishing these targets, also recognizes these three mechanisms for helping these countries tackle their emissions reduction, again they are CDM, JI and ETS.

What are the mechanisms known as CDM and JI?
I usually say that CDM and JI are brothers so they have essentially the same background. CDM which means Clean Development Mechanisms is a mechanism that allows developed countries which have targets for greenhouse emissions reduction to make investments in their own facilities, in their own country. They can buy or they can compensate or, if you wish, to offset their emission by buying emissions reductions through projects in developing countries. So that is CDM. An investor can, for instance, invest in a wind park, in China, and obtain for this a carbon credit and sell it to investors that are in the developed countries. JI, which means Joint Implementation, is almost the same thing but the only difference is that, in general terms, JI projects take place in developed countries. CDM occurs in developing countries and JI in developed countries or economies in transition. Especially today, the hub for JI project is the eastern European countries.

We have heard about recent changes regarding CDM validation and verification. Can you tell us more about this?
Yes, you may be talking about the issuance of the validation and verification manual, what we call VVM, by the executive board of the United Nations convention on climate change. This manual will be issued by the end of this month. It’s a manual dedicated to entities like us and it has all the details and procedures on how to validate and verify CDM projects. Of course, it’s not only entitled to entities like us but also to our clients because now, they know in advance which kind of request they will have from the entities that are auditing their project.

What is the aim of the Emissions Trading Scheme, known as ETS?
This is the third mechanism recognized by the Kyoto protocol. In this case, we are not talking about trading of emissions reductions but trading of emissions allowances. The ETS establishes that each country should define a national allocation plan. According to this allocation plan, each installation - not only each industry but each installation - has a target, or a limit in terms of emissions or the release of greenhouse gases. So, if one installation doesn’t comply with its own cap, either the installation or the owner of the installation has to pay a fine or has to buy allowances from a neighbouring installation, which could be offered by another company, that released greenhouse gases under the cap. So that’s the pure concept of emissions trading, which is very common not for greenhouse gases but for other emissions of polluting gases in, for example, the United States.

What’s happening in countries that have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol?
When we talk about countries that did not ratify the Kyoto protocol, there was Turkey for instance, but Turkey recently ratified the protocol. Essentially though, it’s the United States which has still not ratified Kyoto and there is not any sign, even with a new president, that they will ratify the protocol. On the other hand, they are running a series of alternative programs closely aligned to the emissions trading schemes in general. We can see one very big mechanism that is going on there. It is the California Climate Action Registry, the CCAR, which is an emissions trading scheme involving the States on the west coast and even Canada. So, while they have not ratified the Kyoto protocol, the US is running its own projects or schemes for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

What is VCS?
VCS stands for Voluntary Carbon Standard, this is a standard that was created to address projects that are not accepted by the Kyoto mechanisms. CDM and JI have a limited scope of technologies that can be accepted, so VCS was exactly created to address projects that could not be accepted by CDM and JI.

Now, could you please explain to us the ISO 14064 standard?
ISO 14064 is a standard that establishes how a company could issue its green house gas emission report. So the standard establishes the main points that any emissions report should have and the company that issue this report, using this standard, they can have its information verified by certification companies like ours.

On this subject, what is Bureau Veritas Certification doing? What are you involved in?
Bureau Veritas Certification has been quite active in providing validation and verification services since 2004. We provide services in all the mechanisms that I mentioned before.
We have had numerous projects for example we are working for CEMEX, one of the global leaders in the cement industry and also EDFT, the trading arm of the French Electrical Utility company, EDF, where we are validating some CDM projects.

To complement our services and to offer more value and expertise to our clients, we are currently developing two new competence centers, one in South East Asia, in Jakarta precisely, and another in Eastern Europe. And they will be added to our three existing competence centers, already established, in Beijing, China, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Bombay, India.

What would you consider as your strengths?
Project management is certainly one of our strengths along with delivery in a timely manner. Due to our decentralized approach, we have the competence centers that I mentioned before, we are able to speed up the processes and to make the validation and verification exercises run quicker. Besides, in order to satisfy our clients’ needs, it is very important for us to deliver local competencies and expertise. Although we have this sort of decentralized approach, yet we keep the consistency of our operations from our office in London coping with the consistency requirements of our clients that also operate globally.

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