Two Chinese companies hammered out purchase agreements for
greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions with the World Bank in
Beijing on Friday, covering the one hydro project and one wind farm
project in China under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM).
The World Bank inked the two deals on behalf of the Prototype
Carbon Fund (PCF) and Community Development Carbon Fund.
The Huitengxile Wind Farm Project is located in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Fifty to 100
wind turbines with a total generation capacity of 100 megawatts
will be installed to supply 245 gigawatt hours to the North China
Power Grid. By avoiding coal-fired generation, this project expects
to eliminate 240,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. The
PCF will purchase 1.6 million tons of certified emission reductions
from this project.
The second project inked on Friday was the China Hubei Guangrun
Hydro Development Project, located in Hubei's Guangrun county, which will install
three power stations in the Guangrun River. The 28-megawatt
generation capacity of the Guangrun Station component will supply
about 89 gigawatt hours of renewable energy annually to the Jianshi
Network, which is connected to the Hubei Provincial Power Grid.
Renewable energy is expected to reduce GHG emissions by
increasing the supply of hydro-generated energy to the Hubei
Provincial Power Grid, thus displacing coal and gas energy. The
Guangrun stations component is estimated to reduce GHG emissions by
72,560 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, and expected to
reach full capacity by the end of 2008.
Friday's signings took place at Carbon Expo Asia, the region's
first carbon fair held in Beijing, which ran from Thursday to
Friday.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, business entities from developed
countries are entitled to purchase spare carbon emission reduction
(CER) credits from projects or companies that release a lower
amount of greenhouse gases than they are authorized to.
According to the World Bank and the International Emissions
Trading Association's State of the Carbon Market Report, the global
carbon market grew to nearly US$22 billion in the first nine months
of 2006, more than doubling in value over the almost US$11 billion
recorded last year.
Now the market's total value is about four times the gross
domestic product (GDP) of North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous
Region and more than twice the GDP of Laos, said Karan Capoor of
the World Bank.
The prosperous carbon market is a result of the CDM and Joint
Implementation two mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to
reduce the human impact on climate change. It is also driven by
voluntary carbon transactions in countries including the United
States.
(China Daily October 28, 2006)