On the 31st of August 2013, UPM’s Xuyong Household Biogas Gold Standard VER Project (GS ID 1033) has had its first carbon credit issuance with 4.5 k Gold Standard VERs. The projects supports around two thousand low-income farmer households with certified biogas digester and utilization technology in a “one digester, three renovations” approach. This means: build one digester and retrofit the kitchen, toilet and animal pens. The project is being implemented in 11 towns of Xuyong County in the Province of Sichuan in rural China.

The Xuyong project is organized and implemented by UPM’s proven local partner, Chengdu Oasis Science & Technology Co., Ltd., in cooperation with the Xuyong Rural Energy Office. After successful installation of the biogas systems, a comprehensive technical service will be offered to the participating households for free on a regular basis to ensure a stable operation and to achieve the target emission reductions.

The project activity on one hand reduces CO₂ emissions by replacing traditional fossil fuel consumption for cooking and heating with renewable biogas. On the other hand it avoids methane emissions through the substitution of traditional animal manure disposal in deep pits by closed biogas digester tanks. In addition to the reduction of GHG emissions, the project will bring about many sustainability benefits and will considerably improve the quality of life for both, participants and local people:

• Thousands of households are supplied with climate friendly biogas as a renewable energy, thus the shortage of energy in Xuyong county will be alleviated.
• The participating households become independent from coal for cooking and heating. This energy autonomy allows them to save substantial expenditures and efforts related to energy supply.
• The project helps to reduce the concentrations of CO, SO2, PM10 and NH3 in the air by replacing traditional coal stoves with modern biogas devices for cooking and heating.
• It also improves living conditions and public health because it avoids indoor burning of coal and introduces proper animal manure management systems with much higher sanitary standards.

The Xuyong Household Biogas Project is the first in UPM’s large pipeline of emission reduction projects to have carbon credit issuance. Therefore, this event marks a decisive milestone in UPM’s corporate history, we are very proud to have achieved after many years of hard project development work. - Norbert Garbers, Founder and Co-Owner of UPM and member of the executive board

For further information on this Biogas Household project and the availability of its high quality Gold Standard VERs, please contact:

Henning Huenteler, General Manager, UPM China
hhuenteler(at)upm-cdm.eu, T: +86 10 6468 0500-16

or

Martin Dilger, Managing Director, UPM GmbH Germany
mdilger(at)upm-cdm.eu, T: +49 89 414196-91

For Gold Standard information and related documentation about this project, please visit the public Markit Environmental Registry project entry.