Both South Africa and China are emergent economies heavily dependent on
fossilfuel based energy sources, and the potential to leverage the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM) is significant in both countries. However,
experience to date with CDM indicates South Africa has significantly lagged
behind China in the uptake of the CDM, accounting for only 0.9% of the
worldwide registered annual Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) while China
has dominated the market, generating over 54% of the annual worldwide CERs.
Thus, an opportunity exists to redefine the role of CDM in South Africa to
better incentivise a lower carbon development trajectory. This paper provides
a comparative analysis of the CDM experience in China and South Africa in
order to identify the underlying drivers and obstacles to CDM in both
countries. It is the authors’ objective to analyse the lessons learnt from
marketleading China and laggard South Africa to better understand the
structures and policies necessary within host CDM countries to unlock the
potential of CDM in a post 2012 regime
