TAC Proceedings

MAY 2010

Gold Standard response letter to the PDForum

JANUARY 2010

The Gold Standard Advisory Board – Governance, Guidelines and Responsibilities

The Gold Standard TAC Terms of Reference has been updated. Please click here to download the latest version.

SEPTEMBER 2009

 

1. PoAs in the compliance market

The Gold Standard registration process takes place at the PoA level. However, for CDM PoAs, under special circumstances such as when the PoA Coordinating Entity is not willing to act as the Gold Standard Coordinator, the TAC has decided to allow for registration at the CPA level, following an evaluation that will be performed on a case-by-case basis.

In the case that registration takes place at the CPA level, the following conditions must be satisfied:

• the serial numbers associated with the CERs issued by the UNFCCC to the relevant CDM PoA must allow for a clear differentiation among the various CPAs;
• the CDM PoA-Design Document (DD) and the different CDM CPA-DDs will have to be provided to GS for review;
• a GS PoA-DD must be submitted to GS for approval, which will contain all the information necessary to allow the DOE to perform a GS compliance check for the subsequent CPAs. It will be submitted together with a first CPA-DD;
• GS CPA project documentation, i.e., the CPA-DD and the CPA-Passport must be delivered for each one of the GS applicant CPAs.

All other relevant Gold Standard version 2.1 rules apply.  In exchange for this flexibility, the Gold Standard will ask project proponents to actively convey the Gold Standard message in the context of their PoAs in order to attract as many CPAs as possible to the GS stream.

2. New approved voluntary methodologies

The TAC has approved two new voluntary methodologies for GS-VERS:

 Biodiesel from Waste Oil/Fat (Revised AM0047),  and

Indicative Program, Baseline and Monitoring Methodology for Large-Scale Supply and Distribution of Efficient Light Bulb and Showerhead Products to Households.

Regarding the GS voluntary methodology, Indicative Programme, Baseline and Monitoring Methodology for Improved Cook-Stoves and Kitchen Regimes, the TAC has clarified that this methodology is applicable to water-filtering project activities, although formal approval is conditional to appropriate revisions of the methodology currently under development.

The TAC also clarified that the use of the old stoves in parallel with the improved stoves after project implementation is allowed for, but under the condition that a mechanism is put in place to provide an incentive for the surrendering of the old stoves. This can be in the form of a discount of emission reductions from the households where the old stoves are still in use, or a discount on the selling price of the stoves for households surrendering their old stove.

3. Micro-scale scheme

The TAC is in favour of the development of a very much streamlined registration process for Renewable Energy micro-scale project activities in households and livelihoods in LDCs. This new scheme is currently in development and suggestions as to how it should be designed are welcome - please send to Meinrad. The new scheme will be re-assessed after a one-year pilot phase.

The TAC is also in favour of raising the maximum threshold for the current micro-scale scheme from 5,000 to 10,000 tonnes CO₂^e  per year under the condition that the impact on the reviewing procedures is acceptable and the induced additional workload can be coped with and does not induce quality losses. The conditions for such a revision to be enforced are under investigation.

4. Retroactive registration of CDM project activities

The TAC has confirmed that the maximum period of time eligible for retroactive crediting for GS CDM project activities is two years from the time of registration under Gold Standard (same as for VER project activities), and will not be extended to the full period between CDM registration and the Gold Standard registration in case this period exceeds two years.

5. VERs in capped countries

The TAC has confirmed that it will not allow for the issuance of VERs in cap countries prior to the retirement of an equivalent amount of AAUs.

6. Appeal body

The TAC has confirmed that an Appeal Body should be established. The way this new body should interact with the current governance structure is under investigation.

JUNE 2009

Issues under discussion by the TAC currently include:

• Applicability of Gold Standard methodologies to various circumstances
• Micro-scale projects threshold and scheme design
• Voluntary Programmes of Activities
• Eligibility rules: hydro projects, co-firing projects, biogas proejcts
• 'Appeal body"