On 31 January 2018, UPM’s Sichuan Rural Poor Household Biogas Development Programme (CDM PoA 2898, GS 1239) has been successfully migrated to the new Gold Standard for the Global Goals(GS4GG). According to information from the Gold Standard, it is the first Programme of Activities (PoA) worldwide to have accomplished this transition. The GS4GG certification is effective as of 14 August 2017.

GS4GG is the next-generation standard of market leader Gold Standard. It enables project developers to quantify and optimize their project’s impacts towards climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development as prescribed by the Paris Agreement and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals(UN SDGs). At the same time, enhanced GS4GG requirements for do-no-harm project safeguards, holistic project design, management of trade-offs and local stakeholder engagement ensure that the Gold Standard continues to deliver the highest levels of environmental and social integrity of projects.

With the world’s first ever GS4GG migration of a PoA, UPM’s Sichuan Household Biogas Programme again sets the benchmarks for adopting the best and most innovative market standards. This will help us to provide our clients with robust and reliable evidence for our project’s contribution to climate protection and sustainable development. - Martin Dilger, Managing Director of UPM

Due to the additional costs related to data collection and monitoring of applicable GS4GG indicators, but also because of some still existing methodological challenges, UPM has focused on measuring the PoA’s impact on the following five UN SDGs for the time being:

• UN SDG 03 – Good Health and Well Being
• UN SDG 06 – Clean Water and Sanitation
• UN SDG 07 – Affordable and Clean Energy
• UN SDG 08 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
• UN SDG 13 – Climate Action

Nonetheless, we can substantiate the PoA’s contribution to achieving 14 out of 17 UN SDGs as is shown in the figure below:

Therefore, we will try to verify the positive effects of our Sichuan Household Biogas PoA on further UN SDGs under GS4GG as well, as soon as this is possible.

For further information about UPM, its high-end service offering and its attractive carbon offset portfolio please contact:

Martin Dilger, Managing Director, UPM Germany
mdilger(at)upm-cdm.eu, T: +49 89 1222197-50

or

Guo Gaiai, Vice General Manager, UPM China

guog(at)upm-cdm.eu, T: +86 10 6468 0500