UN suspends leading carbon-offset firm: Emissions trading rocked as Norwegian company … in limbo

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http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081209/full/456686a.html

Published online 9 December 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/456686a

UN suspends leading carbon-offset firm

Emissions trading rocked as Norwegian company is left in limbo.

Quirin Schiermeier

As international climate talks began last week in Poland, the United Nations (UN) suspended the work of the main company that validates carbon-offset projects in developing countries, sending shockwaves through the emissions-trading business.

Based in Oslo, Det Norske Veritas has in the past four years validated and certified almost half of the 1,200 projects approved under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). At its meeting on 28 November in Poznań, the CDM's executive board temporarily withdrew Det Norske Veritas's accreditation after a spot check carried out in early November at the firm's headquarters revealed serious flaws in project management.

The board did not specify which projects are affected, but cites problems with the company's internal auditing processes, and says that one of its staff members was verifying CDM projects without proper qualifications. As a result, "validation activities could not be demonstrated to be based on appropriate sectoral expertise", the board reports.

Det Norske Veritas is a risk-assessment and consulting company with about 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Its 2007 revenue was 8 billion Norwegian krone (US$1.1 billion). It was the largest of 19 companies entitled to validate and certify projects proposed under the CDM, which aims to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by promoting climate-friendly energy technologies, such as wind or hydropower.

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