The European Climate Exchange (ECX) has opted to continue a ban on trade of large hydro CERs

According to CDM watch, the bourse excluded the large hydro CERs because of the confusion that arose from differing interpretations by EU member states when judging whether to approve them for use for EU compliance. Last July EU nations adopted common rules for importing credits from large hydro projects above 20 MW based on sustainability guidelines from the World Commission on Dams (WCD). But ECX said the guidelines did not give its members enough confidence that EU governments would always approve the credits using the same standards.

Before the harmonised guidelines were put in place last year, some market participants said that large hydro CERs valued at as much as €0.60 lower than CERs from other project types. The CER for delivery in December costs around €12 on the ECX today.

The Paris-based Bluenext exchange is reviewing whether to include large hydro projects in its CER contracts and Leipzig’s European Energy Exchange has not ruled out accepting the credits in future.

A little over 10 million CERs have been issued from large hydro projects in the clean development mechanism (CDM) to date, but more than 150 million are expected to be delivered by the end of 2012.

The Russian Socio-Ecological Union welcomes the exclusion of large hydroelectric projects from suppliers of ERUs on climate exchanges. Large hydropower, along with nuclear power, can not be promoted as a way to address energy and climate challenges because they cause significant environmental and social problems and risks.

On the eve of international Day Against Dams, a coalition of environmental NGOs appealed to the Minister for Regional Development with the requirement to exclude from the plan of socio-economic development of Siberia projects of Evenkiskaya, Altaiskaya and Motyginskaya hydro power plants (http://www.greenpeace.org/russia/ru/press/releases/14)

Large hydroelectric dams cause significant damage to the environment, lead to the inundation of vast territories and violate the traditional livelihoods of large numbers of people, cause depression of populations and the extinction of separate animal and plant species. In particular, the much publicly criticized project of the Evenkiyskaya hydropower projectmay lead to flooding of more than 1 million hectares in one of Russia's largest array of old growth forests, which play a crucial role in maintaining the carbon balance and thus, in curbing global climate change.