Industry body calls on UN to lead by example and offset its carbon footprint

Clean energy industry body the Project Developer Forum (PD Forum), whose members include Singapore-based Sindicatum Sustainable Resources, is calling on the United Nations to show its commitment to tackling climate change and to saving its own carbon market, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), by offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions with Certified Emission Reductions (CERs).

The PD Forum - whose members include some of the biggest players in the global emissions reduction industry and account for over 20% of investment in the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism - has started a petition urging the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, to lead by example and offset the UN’s carbon footprint by buying CERs (the carbon offsets that serve as the CDM’s internal currency) where it can’t be reduced through other methods.

While the UN and its 38 Partners on Climate Change are implementing measures to increase resource efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint, they do not currently offset their global emissions. According to the UN’s third annual report, titled “Moving Towards a Climate Neutral UN”, the UN’s total GHG emissions for 2010 (for 54 entities in hundreds of locations and over 200,000 employees) were 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. The PD Forum hopes its petition will raise public awareness of this issue and persuade the UN to practice what it preaches by going carbon neutral.

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