LONDON (Reuters) - A United Nations climate panel will ask a sub-panel to investigate further claims that a Kyoto Protocol scheme may be incentivizing participants to emit more greenhouse gases, environmental groups said on Friday.
Several carbon-cutting projects approved under Kyoto's $2.7 billion Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which helps provide carbon finance to emerging economies, have been accused by green groups of intentionally increasing their emissions in order to destroy them and collect more carbon offsets.
The roughly 20 projects in question, the most lucrative under the scheme, are mainly in China and India. They destroy a potent waste gas called hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) and account for more than half of the 423.5 million offsets issued to the 2,300 projects approved to date.
