DNV Norway
Henrik O. Madsen (CEO)
Atle Bergshaven (Chairman)
Stiftelsen Det Norske Veritas (DNV) is one of the biggest companies in the business. It has headquarters near Oslo in Norway, 300 offices in 100 countries and 8,400 employees worldwide. Its revenue in 2006 was about USD1.2 billion.
DNV is heavily involved in validating and verifying projects undertaken through the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which was set up under the Kyoto Protocol to enable rich countries to offset their excess carbon emissions.
DNV and CDM
DNV was in 2004 one of the first companies to be accredited by the CDM Executive Board to validate greenhouse gas emissions reductions from projects in the developing world.
The CDM Executive Board is a 10-man committee set up by the United Nations to administer the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). CDM is the central plank of the Kyoto Protocol.
The job of the 10-man CDM Executive Board is to appoint trustworthy agencies (such as DNV) that can act as a link between businesses in rich countries such as the UK, and businesses in developing countries, such as India.
The board also has to vet projects submitted by these trusted agencies to ensure that the projects would not have been possible without the financial aid provided by rich countries through the clean development mechanism.
By April 2008 the CDM Executive Board, chaired by Mr Rajesh Kumar Sethi, had approved a total of about 1,000 projects, and about 500 of them had been validated by… er…DNV.
The company’s involvement with climate change project validation and verification was increasing from month to month until November 2008 when the CDM Executive Board did a spot check on DNV and found irregularities.
As at 05 December, 2008, DNV is no longer allowed to handle CDM projects anywhere in the world.
DNV has more than 200 trained climate change auditors worldwide, and a particularly strong presence in India where many of its projects have been undertaken and where DNV has made a lot of money.
DNV’s climate change services manager in India is Mr Chandrashekara Kumaraswamy.
DNV will be missing out on some very lucrative business unless it can get itself re-instated by the CDM Board.
CDM projects have so far generated more than 135 million certified emission reductions (CERs). The mechanism is currently anticipated to generate more than 2.7 billion CERs in the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period.
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