The regulator of the nascent Paris agreement crediting mechanism (Pacm) has scheduled an additional meeting in October to ensure all the rules for the methodologies underpinning the credits are in place before the UN Cop climate summit in November.
Pacm's supervisory body decided at its meeting this week in Bonn, Germany, to schedule the additional meeting, while the mechanism's methodological expert panel will also hold an additional meeting that month.
The body, which regulates Pacm, also decided to extend the deadline for renewing the crediting period for carbon mitigation activities that have successfully transitioned from Pacm's predecessor, the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM). The change addresses projects for which the transition to Pacm was approved earlier this year, but which would need to renew their crediting period a year later.
The meeting saw a further two CDM projects registered by the supervisory body, as requests to transition to Pacm were approved, with modifications, for a Cambodia-based water purification programme and a Ghana-based and South Korea-financed improved cookstove programme.
The body also ruled on a project on "a very exceptional basis", allowing an improved cookstove programme in Myanmar to be registered, while allowing remote inspection.
It also adopted a standard identifying "suppressed demand", amending the draft prepared by the expert panel to give a greater say to host countries on setting the threshold up to which the intended project beneficiaries are regarded as being in suppressed demand conditions, with respect to identified "basic human needs".
Stakeholders and some supervisory body members, mainly from developing countries, had questioned the 250 kWh/yr total electricity use threshold stipulated by the draft, demanding more context-specific values.
The supervisory body also voiced its dissatisfaction with a much-discussed paper issued by the expert panel last month on addressing non-permanence and reversals of emissions cuts. Concerns were raised over the lack of alignment of one of the options proposed with the Pacm's removals standard, which was endorsed by the countries at Cop 29 last year and is viewed as a key standard, along with that on the rules for methodologies.
The supervisory body urged the panel to prepare a single recommendation by next month and to "stay within the mandate set by the previous decisions of the Supervisory Body, including the removals standard".
The body also requested that the panel rapidly develop a reversal risk assessment tool, and to suggest options for alternatives to having private companies forced to insure the risk of reversal, such as guarantees or insurance products.
It decided at the meeting to accredit five more bodies as designated operational entities, tasked with validating and verifying activities under Article 6.4 of the Paris climate agreement, which governs Pacm.
Capacity building in host countries is progressing, with the number of designated national authorities standing at 113 as of 7 August, the body said. And 22 countries have submitted information on the fulfilment of host country participation requirements.
The supervisory body, along with the methodological expert panel, is running a continuous process of revising methodologies from the CDM, and completing or assessing new Pacm methodologies, which any stakeholder may propose.
But the regulator warned that its work is facing a financial shortfall for 2026-27, "as revenue generation is currently limited".