concept

The baseline, or business as usual, of a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project activity, is the senario which represents, in a reasonable way, the anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions that would be emited if the project activity never took place.

objective

The reason of establish a baseline in a mitigation of GHG emission project is to quantify these mitigated emissions. Beside the type of mitigation project (cogeneration, fuel change, methane capture, etc.), is necessary to quantify the amount of future generated GHG emissions and has to be compared with the GHG emissions that would be produced if the project never exist (baseline).

For example: In a factory which requieres heat in their production process, and now they used oil fuel, and the project is the switch to natural gas instead of oil fuel, the baseline would be the CO2 emissions of the oil fuel combustion. The usage of natural gas as a fuel, also has CO2 emissions in their combustion, but their emissions will be less than the combustion of fuel oil. The mitigation effect of the project would be the result of diminish the amount of CO2 emissions of the natural gas combustion from the CO2 emissions of the fuel oil combustion, which has been establish as the baseline.

characteristicis

The quantification of the GHG emissions in the baseline has to be supported in the "business as usual" of the activities. If the activity already exists, the usual activity woulb be the baseline, otherwise, the baseline would be the usual activity of similar projects os business; for example, in an electric generation project, the usual activity would be the usage of the public electric net, and it would be establish as the baseline.

In many cases, when the direct information is not available, the data would be obtained form third parties or from the references figures of the guidelines published by the Intergovernamental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

The United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) settled that the way to obtain the baseline must be documented under the approved methodologies guidelines. These methodolgies allows, in a confident and accurate possible way, the GHG emissions of the baseline.

Cosmo Consulting specialized in the quiantification of the projects GHG emissions, to establish the baseline and the mitigated GHG emissions. We support the quantification in the UNFCCC approved methodologies, and in the international organizations methodologies, who leads the industry sectors. Also makeing the references to the Mexican market and specific project.