Volume 13: Low Carbon Cities and Urban Energy Systems: Part II

What matters in the distributions of Clean Development Mechanism projects? A panel data approach Boqiang Lin, Zheng Li

Abstract

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an important approach that developed and developing countries can take actual actions to mitigate global climate change. Both carbon reduction and sustainable development are the goals of CDM. However, the uneven distribution of CDM projects in the developing countries may jeopardize the fulfilling of the goals. This paper used a panel data of 107 host countries and explored the influencing factors with the panel negative binomial regression. And the club convergence model is used to divide the host countries into different groups according to their numbers of operating CDM projects each year. The results show that the affluence, the sophisticated international trading experience and the growing demands for energy of the host countries have positive impact on the successful registrations of the CDM projects, while the cost of carbon emission abatement hinders the registration. But for countries with less CDM projects, the industrial level and national carbon emission have no significant impacts on the distribution of CDM projects. In the end, target policy implications were offered according to the results.

Keywords Clean Development Mechanism, uneven distribution, panel negative binomial regression, club convergence, market-oriented