Ci-Dev supports programmatic crediting: crediting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission mitigation activities by supporting a larger number of similar projects which are often of small or micro scale (including household level) within a program, and employing technology-based benchmarks and monitoring, reporting and verification systems.

Ci-Dev has committed to purchase approximately $78 million in emission reductions (commonly known as carbon credits) from 13 energy access programs. Ci-Dev’s programmatic crediting approach supports similar projects at small-scale within a larger, regional or national, program.

The fund will utilize the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as the methodological framework to quantify, verify and certify the emission reductions while transitioning the portfolio to Paris Agreement-compliant approaches after 2020. The projects supported by Ci-Dev through the programmatic crediting approach can be a blueprint for scaled-up action through replication.

In addition to reducing 8 million tons of CO2 equivalent, Ci-Dev programs will have provided about 400+ Megawatts of low-carbon energy by 2025. This means multiple benefits for a community across multiple areas. For a community this means:

Gender – Enhanced security, more educational opportunities for women and girls.

Economic – New commercial activity from longer business hours, more jobs, entrepreneurship.

Environment – Reduced air pollution from less kerosene and diesel lights; support for healthy forests from less wood fuel.

Health – Reduction in illness and death from household air pollution; secure storage and transport for medicine and food.

The Standardized Crediting Framework (SCF) is a streamlined, country-owned emissions reduction crediting framework that improves transparency of national crediting decision-making, reduces transaction costs, and shortens the time it takes to generate those emissions reductions. Developed and supported by the Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev), the SCF builds on the lessons learned from experiences with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) model, which was developed and used under the Kyoto treaty. This means that the SCF can help countries to access climate finance, lower transaction costs for emissions reduction crediting operations, and encourage private sector engagement in energy access.

The SCF can support a country’s climate action plans and Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement by helping to build capacity of host country institutions, improve coordination among domestic entities, and align climate change policy goals with sectoral ones. Taken together, these support mechanisms can help countries to participate in emissions reduction crediting and to access results-based climate finance. Successful examples of the SCF in action in Senegal can be found here.

The SCF addresses challenges faced by CDM programs in the current crediting system, especially energy access programs in Africa. These include:

• Low capacity of emission reduction developers—through simplification of reporting requirements and helping standardize most of the monitoring parameters at the national level;
• Interaction with domestic policies—by focusing on technologies with clear additionality;
• Data needs and the related transaction costs for monitoring—reduced by using more standardized approaches, using simplifications to the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system, and simplifying the project cycle.