Climate protection and economic development are now in greater harmony as 1,000 solar-powered cookers provided by Klimaschutz e.V. of Bonn will soon reduce the demand for fuel wood on Indonesia’s Sabang Islands. This will protect the local forest, clean up the air and save over 24,500 tons of climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO₂) over the next seven years. Germany will also benefit from this project, for the CO₂ emissions avoided in Indonesia can be credited to Germany’s Kyoto Protocol commitment to reduce CO₂. This scenario from which everyone benefits is made possible by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It is available to all Kyoto Protocol signatory states and aids countries (and a few individual companies) in fulfilling their climate protection obligations in less developed as well as threshold countries. This will protect the global climate and speed up the transfer of know-how in climate-friendly engineering to the world’s poorer regions.

The Solar Cooker Project Aceh 1, Indonesia, of Klimaschutz e.V. (Bonn) marks the first entirely German CDM project registered with the United Nations Climate Secretariat. The German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt) at the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA), which is the national organ responsible for authorization, approved the project in December 2005. Its registration with the Secretariat officially recognizes the measure as in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol. Up until now Germany had been involved in only one CDM project, namely in a joint campaign with Britain in Rajahsthan, India, which reduces greenhouse gases through improved technology in the production of refrigerants.

Besides CDM projects in threshold and developing countries, the Kyoto Protocol provides for emission reduction projects known as Joint Implementation (JI) in other industrialized countries. In the framework of emissions trading within the European Union, JI and CDM are very promising mechanisms with which to counteract global climate change.

In Germany implementation of the Kyoto Protocol’s project-based CDM and JI mechanisms is regulated by the Project Mechanisms Act (ProMechG). UBA’s DEHSt is in charge of reviewing and licensing projects according to international climate policy standards. CDM project applications must provide details of the project and indicate what and how much greenhouse gases will be reduced. DEHSt also checks whether calculation of so-called reference-case emissions—the volume of greenhouse gases that would be emitted in the absence of the measure- is realistic. Increased use of nuclear energy to reduce CO₂ emissions is prohibited in JI projects. Climate protection projects that could potentially damage the climate (e.g. large-scale dam projects) are subject to special requirements of environmental protection.