This paper assesses whether and how national and multinational credit purchase facilities have supported Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects that are vulnerable to the risk of discontinuing GHG abatement. Improving the understanding of the impact that the credit purchase facilities have had in supporting the continuation of emission reductions for vulnerable CDM projects can inform the available options for their further support.

Key findings:

Although the maximum potential CER supply from existing CDM projects in the 2013–2020 period is 4.65 billion CERs, we estimated that the potential CER supply from registered CDM projects with a high vulnerability to discontinuation is only 171 million CERs for this same period, or less than 4 percent of the total. The impacts of six major credit purchase facilities are included in the analysis of this paper.

• These six credit purchase facilities account for procurement of approximately 120 million CERs during the 2013–2020 period.
• Although the collective impact of these credit purchase facilities only accounts for 2.5% of the potential CER supply from all existing CDM projects in the 2013–2020 period, the impact for vulnerable projects specifically is more significant: approximately 30% of CERs procured from the credit purchase facilities came from project types classified as having generally high vulnerability to discontinuation, with a further 28% coming from project types with variable vulnerability.
• Procurement from the six credit purchase facilities accounts for 20% of the potential supply from highly vulnerable projects, reducing the remaining potential supply from 171 million CERs to approximately 137 million CERs.