After many years of intensive project development work, UPM’s Chinese “Sichuan Poor Rural-Household Biogas Development Programme” (CDM Ref. 2898, GS ID 1239) has had its first issuance of approximately 80 k Gold Standard CERs today. Since the CDM Executive Board so far has only issued a total of slightly more than 58 k CERs to PoAs, this issuance will more than double the total amount of available PoA CERs. Only five PoAs, including UPM’s, have achieved issuance at all.

The programme enables up to one million low-income rural households in China’s Sichuan province to supply themselves conveniently and cheaply with renewable energy from their own small-scale biogas plants for cooking and heating. With a total potential GHG emissions reduction of up to 20 million tCO2e due to avoided emissions of methane from animal husbandry and the substitution of coal and firewood by clean biogas, UPM’s benchmark PoA is one of the largest and most ambitious climate protection programmes within the CDM and the Gold Standard. In addition, it significantly improves income situation, environmental conditions, health and quality of living of the participating farmer families and thus strongly contributes to a sustainable regional development in Sichuan.

UPM’s Household Biogas PoA is very well embedded within the political framework of its host country China. It is in line with today’s Chinese climate protection policy and complies with the focal aspects of energy, agriculture and regional development policy in the current Chinese Five-Year-Plan. Furthermore, the PoA builds upon an existing rural biogas promotion scheme of the Chinese government that is being implemented in Sichuan by the Sichuan Rural Energy Office (SREO).

Thanks to the proven cooperation with the SREO and UPM’s long-term local partner Oasis, the PoA’s implementation schedule has not only been achieved but exceeded. By the end of 2013, we expect to have reached an amount of approximately 620,000 installed and operating biogas digesters. As each year another 100,000 plants are added, we will have met the one million digester target already by the end of 2017. This would put us in the position to supply our customers with up to two million Gold Standard CERs per year on a reliable basis. - Martin Dilger, Managing Director of UPM

Since recently, German logistics corporation Deutsche Post DHL is among the buyers of this PoA’s certificates for its voluntary carbon offset scheme “Go Green”.

The multifaceted technology (methane avoidance, methane containment, biofuel) and the resulting climate protection effects, as well as the numerous advantages for so many peasant families, whose living conditions are massively improved by the project, have been decisive to choose exactly this programme. - Dagmar Fellmann, Manager Renewables and Origination at Neas Energy

For further information on this PoA and the availability of its high quality Gold Standard CERs, please visit the new PoA website or contact:

Ms Gaiai Guo, Vice General Manager, UPM China
guog(at)upm-cdm.eu, T: +86 10 6468 0500-13

or

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

 

Update (22.01.2014): following the first GS CERs issuance of UPM’s Sichuan Household Biogas PoA, UPM has cancelled eleven of the issued GS-CERs to cover the personal offset of CO2 emissions offered to its partners in Europe and China for the new year.