LONDON (Reuters) - A United Nations panel will review a carbon offset request from a fifth greenhouse gas destroying plant, the UN said on Friday, a sign that all similar projects approved under a Kyoto Protocol carbon finance scheme will be scrutinized.

The UN’s climate arm said on its website it would review a request for offsets, called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), from the Zhejiang Juhua project in China, which makes money by destroying a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23.

The project was approved under Kyoto’s $2.7 billion Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which helps fund cuts in carbon emissions in emerging economies.

It is the fifth HFC-23 project this week to have its CER issuance request face an additional review by the CDM’s executive board. It had requested 1.44 million CERs for abatement activities between September and November 2009.

The project’s investors include Japan’s Marubeni, JGC Corp. and Daioh Construction, according to data from a UN agency.

Four other Chinese HFC-23 projects are to have their requests reviewed after environmental groups earlier this year alleged that the projects were intentionally boosting their emissions in order to then destroy them and collect more CERs.

Issuance requests from the five projects total 9.2 million tonnes of CERs.

Benchmark CER futures prices were down two cents to 13.35 euros a tonne at 1046 GMT after hitting 13.60 euros earlier on Friday, the highest level since May 12.