UN carbon market body opens Bonn meeting as methodology backlog builds
The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, the governing panel of the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, has convened its 22nd meeting at the UN Campus in Bonn, opening a four-day session running until 30 July at which members will consider the mechanism’s draft annual report to the Paris Agreement’s governing body alongside continuing work on the methodology pipeline that project developers have been waiting on.
The Supervisory Body is composed of 12 members drawn from Parties to the Paris Agreement, with two members from each of the five UN regional groups, one from the least developed countries and one from small island developing states. Mkhuthazi Steleki of South Africa serves as Chair and Jacqui Ruesga of New Zealand as Vice-Chair, both elected at the Body’s 20th meeting in February and serving until the first meeting of 2027. The draft annual report published as an annex to this week’s annotated agenda records that the Body held four meetings during the reporting period and adopted its 2026 workplan at that February session.
The meeting comes at a point of acute pressure on the mechanism’s methodology output. More than 2,000 projects registered under the Kyoto-era Clean Development Mechanism have applied to transition into the Paris mechanism, but they require newly approved methodologies before they can generate credits, a requirement that took effect at the start of this year. The mechanism’s approved methodology library remains thin: the Supervisory Body approved a revised landfill gas management methodology in 2025, and at its 21st meeting in May approved a mechanism methodology covering nitrous oxide abatement from nitric acid production, alongside a methodological tool on the analysis of lock-in risk, a revised standard on demonstration of additionality, and a methodological tool on the fraction of non-renewable biomass.
Work on clean cooking has been the most closely watched strand, given the concentration of transitioning CDM activities in that category and its significance for African project developers in particular. The mechanism’s Methodological Expert Panel, which develops methodologies for the Supervisory Body’s approval either on its own initiative or from third-party submissions, has been working through a proposed methodology for cooking energy transitions submitted by an external consortium, having considered it at successive meetings in Bonn through the first half of the year. A parallel strand covering grid-connected renewable electricity generation has followed a similar path. Both underwent public consultation earlier in the year.
The mechanism moved from rulemaking into live operation in February, when the Supervisory Body approved the first issuance of credits under Article 6.4, from a clean cooking project in Myanmar distributing efficient cookstoves. That approval was notable for the scale of the downward revision applied: updated values and more conservative calculation approaches meant credited reductions came in roughly 40% below what would have been issued under the predecessor Clean Development Mechanism. Credits from the project are being shared between the Republic of Korea’s emissions trading system and Myanmar’s own national climate target, creating a direct link between the UN mechanism and a national compliance regime.
Secretariat figures reported earlier this year showed 39 bottom-up methodology submissions received from market participants, of which seven passed initial screening. The Supervisory Body has previously indicated it expects to pass six to seven methodologies by the end of the year, a total it estimates would cover roughly 60% to 70% of activities currently seeking transition and holding or expecting host country approval. Host country delegates have publicly warned that developers may look elsewhere if the pace does not pick up. The Body meets once more before COP31, in Bonn from 5 to 9 October.
