Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), says all the major changes proposed for the CDM – from greater transparency within the Executive Board governing the body to a standardisation of the approvals process – have “pretty much been sorted out”.

But Sawyer cautions that regardless of an agreement to reshape the CDM, the proposed reforms will not move forward in the absence of a broader climate deal. As the CDM is an offshoot of the Kyoto Protocol – itself part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – it cannot be divorced from the climate negotiations.

“There’s no reason why if we weren’t doing anything else here [in Copenhagen] that the CDM changes wouldn’t happen. All the major provisions had already been more or less agreed in Poznan [where Poland hosted COP14]”, he says. “Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.”

The CDM is one of the ‘flexibility mechanisms’ established by the Kyoto Protocol. It allows investors in developed countries to generate tradable carbon-offset credits by building low-carbon projects in industrialising nations.

The renewables industry has been calling for CDM reform for several years as its problems have grown in sympathy with its size. Green-energy project developers complain of long wait times for approvals, which they blame on the CDM’s lack of full-time employees, technical experts and funding.

More recently the CDM has come under fire as dozens of Chinese wind projects have been delayed or rejected due to concerns over their additionality. CDM officials claim China has lowered its feed-in tariff for wind energy in order to make some projects appear less commercially viable than they really are.

Sawyer says several small issues remain on the table, and given the highly politicised and volatile nature of the Copenhagen negotiations the reform package could still fall through. But without a major surprise, the reforms will be pushed through -- if a broader deal is struck.

“Last minute things could still come up,” Sawyer says. “You don’t know at the end of the day whether such things are legitimate concerns from governments, or monkey wrenches they throw in thinking they could maybe trade for something else.”

Earlier this week, Recharge reported that carbon capture and storage (CCS) will not be made eligible for the CDM until at least next year -- and maybe ever -- despite intense lobbying efforts by countries as disparate as Norway and Saudi Arabia.