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                    CDM Methodologies and Their Managerial and Technological Basis



International relations prime over emissions, technical change and economics.  These dimensions can be aligned to a degree when they are build into the accounting framework underlying CDM, the CDM methodologies.  Based on my engineering and my ethnography experience, I seek opportunities to demonstrate this aligning.  In particular by focussing on the factors that shape technical changes and by defining baselines and emission scenarios so that technical changes get most emission reduction credits. 
The table below shows CDM parameter and institutional aspects for four “technological trajectories“ (the columns), prominent subjects of science studies and in the innovation literature1, that shape the environmental modernization of industrial economies.  I use it to check any CDM activity in order to complete its parameters and to achieve more impact on global emissions trading.






Science - based
trajectories

Scale intensive
trajectories

Information
intensive
trajectories

Specialized
supplier
trajectories

typical
technologies

nuclear energy

automotive

electricity
distribution

power plants,
recycling

technical change
modus operanti

patent royalties,
get access to
research

consumer services

perception of
system characteristics

business alliances

emission dimension:

dominant CDM
barriers

additionality

monitoring

baselines are mostly
current policy

conservativeness in
linked systems

alternatives to
current CDM

sector baselines

efficiency standards

network access
regulation

?

methodology parts
and crucial
professions
required for
novel approaches

R&D management

marketing,
retailers

regulators,
industry associations

manufacturers'
customer relations

institutional dimension:


examples and
their paradigms


Bakelite2
Kuhnian authority


refrigerators,
consumption style3


Aramis4, QWERTY5
politics


Deltaplan6
professional habitus


major
actors


scientists,
patent lawyers


marketing,
advertisers


monopolists,
government


engineers,
designers

determined by

logic of discoveries,
adherence to
scientific values

firm's mastery of
market demand

infrastructure,
company law

pick buyers' needs,
matching user

players


few producers
few buyers


many producers
mass buyers


few producers
mass buyers


some producers
some buyers


seamless web7 of
change history


discovery versus
networks


performance versus
meaning


system versus
power


performance versus
institutions

political dimension:


effective tools for
sustainability


science policy
assessment


Blue Angel,
popularising
metrics


new legitimacy,
politics


voluntary
codes


democracy


science shops,
concensus fora8,
US: courts


market power


cases of public
deliberation9


expert consultation
procedures and
accessibility





  Tasks in methodology making that I find to be effective:

  • compare monitoring uncertainties and regulatory risks

  • align eligibility criteria, barriers and monitoring

  • provide engineering and thermodynamics to elaborate emission calculations

  • survey commercial players in a technological field

  • elaborate marketing roles of CDM project formats

  • find economic niches for new methodologies and gaps in existing methodologies

  • adapt methodologies to carbon traders' interests and carbon market segments

  • compare organisational solutions of firms for CDM project implementation

  • outline plans and teams for methodology and PDD production

  • steer the assembling of business, technical and regulatory components of PDDs and methodologies

  • design stakeholder consultation and auxiliary documents

1Dosi G, 1982, "Technological Paradigms and Technological Trajectories: A Suggested Interpretation of the Dynamics and Directions of Technical Change", Research Policy, 11: 147-162.
2Bijker W, 1995, Of Bicycles, Bakelite and Bulbs. Towards a Theory of Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge: MIT Press.
3Campbell C, 2002, "The craft consumer: Culture, craft and consumption in a postmodern society", Journal of consumer culture, 5:23-42.
4Latour B, 1996, Aramis, or, The Love of Technology, Cambridge: Harvard UP.
5David P, 1997, Path dependence and the quest for historical economics: one more chorus of the ballad of QWERTY, Discussion papers in economic and social history no.20, Oxford UP.
6Bijker W, 2002, "The Oosterschelde storm surge barrier: a test case for Dutch water technology, management and politics", Technology and Culture, 43/3: 569-584.
7Hughes T. "The evolution of large technological systems", In: Bijker W, Hughes T, Pinch T, editors, 1987, The social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Smith M, Marx L, editors, 1994, Does technology drive history?: the dilemma of technological determinism, Cambridge: MIT Press.
8Joss S, 1998, "Danish consensus conferences as a model of participatory technology assessment", Science and public policy, 25/1: 2-22.
9Jasanoff S, 2005, Designs on nature: science and democracy in Europe and in the United States, Princeton UP.

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Thomas Grammig

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