The National Energy Globe Award China 2014 was awarded to UPM Umwelt-Projekt-Management GmbH, Chengdu Oasis Science & Technology Co., Ltd and Sichuan Rural Energy Office for an outstanding project that seeks to mitigate climate change by supporting the installations of bio-digesters and provides plentiful clean renewable energy to enhance the quality of life of the rural people of the Sichuan region in a sustainable way.
We are very happy to inform you that our “Sichuan Poor Rural-Household Biogas PoA received today, on the UN World Environment Day, the Energy Globe Award for the best national project in China!
The Energy Globe Award was founded in 1999 by the Austrian energy pioneer Wolfgang Neumann. With more than 160 nations participating and nearly 1,000 project applications annually, the Energy Globe Award is one of the world’s most prestigious environmental prizes.
Today, UPM’s most respected “Sichuan Poor Rural-Household Biogas Development Programme” has relieved our global climate by 500,000 tons of carbon emissions from the atmosphere since the start of its reduction period on 10th of May 2012.
This impressive milestone for climate protection has been achieved by those 73 Component Project Activities (CPAs) that have been successfully included in this PoA so far. These CPAs include a total of 330,000 low income rural households equipped with advanced biodigesters and cook stoves in the districts of Yibin, Neijiang, Suining, Ziyang, Zigong, Luzhou, Leshan, Meishan, Mianyang, Guang’An, Dazhou and Aba all of which are located in China’s Sichuan province.
Throughout its entire lifetime, this CDM and Gold Standard registered PoA aims to save up to 20 million tCO2e, comprising a total of one million low income rural households in Sichuan. The second issuance of the PoA’s much sought after Gold Standard CERs (GS CERs) is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2014. From this upcoming issuance, we expect to obtain around 390,000 units of GS CERs that shall be delivered to mandatory and voluntary carbon offsetters all around the globe.
On 24th March 2014, our “Sichuan Poor Rural-Household Biogas Development Programme” (PoA) has successfully included a new batch of 20 Component Project Activities (CPAs) within the CDM framework. Combined with the 53 CPAs previously included, the PoA umbrella now includes a total of 73 CPAs reducing GHG emissions and generating Gold Standard CERs.
These 73 CPAs represent more than 330,000 low income Sichuan rural households equipped with modern biogas digesters and cook stoves. Altogether, the PoA foresees the inclusion of 220 CPAs, comprising a total of more than a million households. Current PoA planning anticipates that each year at least one new batch of 20 to 25 CPAs shall be added to this programme.
“This CPAs inclusion and the regular PoA inclusion schedule prove, firstly, that this PoA implementation is well on track, and secondly, that UPM and its Chinese cooperation partners, despite adverse carbon market conditions, are fully committed to this unique climate protection programme, and will continue to scale it up“, said Martin Dilger, Managing Director of German UPM GmbH.
For further information on thePoA and the availability of its high quality GS CERs, contact us.
Official CDM information on this CPA inclusion can be obtained on the UNFCCC CDM website.
Last week, UPM and its Chinese “Sichuan Poor Rural-Household Biogas Development Programme” (CDM Ref. 2898, GS ID 1239) have been officially shortlisted for the 2014 International Ashden Awards. Out of 153 applicants in this prize category, only 25 organisations have been selected for the next stage of Ashden’s evaluation process.
The Ashden Awards were founded in 2001 to uncover and reward sustainable energy champions around the world that are cutting carbon, protecting the environment, reducing poverty and improving people’s lives. Renamed Ashden in 2012, they have now rewarded over 150 enterprises in the UK and developing world that so far have collectively improved the lives of 37 million people, saving more than 5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.
Finalists for each Award category will be announced in early April, with Awards to be presented at a ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 22 May.
Ashden Award winners will receive a cash prize of between £5,000 and £40,000, a platform to promote their work and tailored support to grow even further.
“The entire team of both UPM and its Chinese cooperation partner Oasis is proud and delighted to be shortlisted for the 2014 International Ashden Awards, one of the most important sustainable energy awards in the world. To figure among the chosen few for this much respected award is a great honour for us which strongly motivates us to continue our efforts for climate protection and sustainable development“, tells UPM’s Managing Director Martin Dilger.
Ashden’s original shortlist announcement can be found at: http://www.ashden.org/news/shortlist-announced-2014-ashden-awards .
After many years of intensive project development work, our 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 Excecutive 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 ours, have achieved issuance at all.
As described in this website, 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, our 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.
Our 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 builts 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 our 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 2 million Gold Standard CERs per year on a reliable basis“, reports UPM’s Managing Director Martin Dilger.
Since recently, German logistics corporation Deutsche Post DHL is among the buyers of our 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”, explains 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, contact us.
Update (22.01.2014): following the first GS CERs issuance of our Sichuan Household Biogas PoA, we have cancelled eleven of the issued GS-CERs to cover the personal offset of CO2 emissions offered to our partners in Europe and China for the new year.
Happy Carbon Neutral Holiday Season! It is now the period of the year when all, while busy preparing year-end reports, are getting ready to enjoy the holiday season. Within a month-time, several festivities will be celebrated around the world, synonym of family reunion, leisure travelling or resting at home. In appreciation of continuous support and successful cooperation, and with their well-being in mind, we have prepared this year a surprise for our partners and friends: a personal offset of 100 kg of CO2 emissions – three days of Carbon Neutral Holidays – with the UPM’s Sichuan Household Biogas Programme of Activity (PoA). This present comes in form of a very special greeting card coming together with a magnet, which we hope will trigger interesting discussions about sustainability and climate mitigation!
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To promote our PoA, we have produced a Video to tell the story of the households of Sichuan. Together with Alberto Guiducci from Devine Films, we travelled to some of the remote areas in which we are distributing the biogas digesters and asked the households about how their lives have changed after they installed the digesters.
For the households in Sichuan, the reduction of carbon dioxide, that helps us financing the programme is not important. For them, it is the drastic improvements of living conditions that convince people of joining the programme: Reduced spendings on coal, a clean and always available fuel for cooking and a drastically improved hygienic treatment of animal manure and toilets. The digesters greatly impact the rural live and this is what we want to show in this video.
Enjoy watching the video: https://www.vimeo.com/78807306!
After nearly three years of work, several photo and video shooting trips and meeting many of our friends and of course the households for which we are developing this projects, we are finally ready to talk about our programme! We would like to invite you to learn more about the Sichuan Household Biogas Programme, its participants and the benefits besides the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.