The mission

Our candidates are on a worldwide mission to analyze, understand and discover the richness of energy and environment activities. Like all GDF SUEZ employees, they are committed to responsible energy.

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The 2 teams

Perrine and Julien

currently in France

Marc and Laure

currently in France

See you soon on generationhorizons.com!

Avoiding Greenhouse gas emissions : 2 projects of GDF SUEZ Latin America

06/02/2011

By The Energy Tellers

You liked our video “Cap and Trade Mechanism for dummies” but you are wondering what happens in the field ? Here is the answer !

In the previous article, we told you about the Kyoto Protocol, carbon credits, Clean Developement Mechanism and so on in a theoretical way. But in the field, what is the reality ?

GDF SUEZ is committed to supplying the growing energy demands of the countries and people in the Latin American continent. This commitment also concerns, where it is possible, the generation of this energy based on clean energy resources that avoid GHG emissions. Such projects are being developed in Brasil, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile and Panama, but we have decided to focus on two projects that we could actually visit.

Lages biomass power plant

In Lages (south of Brazil) GDF SUEZ built a biomass power plant that utilizes the waste of the regional wood industry. Before the project was built, the wood waste was simply dumped into landfills and its decomposition and moldering generated methane, a strong GHG. Now with the project not only the methane emissions are stopped, but also the residues are converted into renewable energy. This is an ideal example to show how an environmental problem can be converted into a contribution for sustainable development.

The project was the first of its kind to obtain carbon credits in Brazil and recently it even won the second position in the United Nations photo contest: http://cdm.unfccc.int/contest/10/winpc10.html. The photo shows how the ash generated by the Power Plant is used as fertilizer to grow vegetables in an educational program to teach children about the life cycle of plants.

Monte Redondo Wind Farm

In the North of Chile, municipality of Ovalle, GDF SUEZ has developed the Monte Redondo Wind Farm with a generation capacity of 38 MW as part of its strategy to expand non conventional renewable energy’s generation capacities. In fact the project is the second Wind Farm to start operation in Chile. The plant was inaugurated in December 2009 and has already obtained a positive validation report according to the CDM. The project is very important to increase the participation of renewable energy in Chile and to improve the infrastructure and technical capabilities for the development of further wind parks. In the meantime, the project was already extended by another 10 MW and now is capable to generate clean energy for about 74 thousand households.

Here is the video we published after our visit of the wind farm :

For further information about the project you may also visit: http://www.eolicamonteredondo.cl/

A very long process

As mentioned in the previous article, it is very important that all emission reductions generated are material and verifiable. To assure this important objective, the process to obtain carbon credits is very long because you have to prove to the CDM Executive Board, which has been established by the United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change (UNFCCC) that your project fulfills all the required conditions. Though this is important, the process is also very complicated and it can take two years or more to obtain registration status. To have an idea of all the administrative parts, just have a quick look at this link that gathers the Lages Methane Avoidance Project documents. http://cdm.unfccc.int/Projects/DB/DNV-CUK1140180495.84

We would like to conclude by thanking Philipp Hauser for having given to us a part of his time in order to introduce the world of carbon credits. We wish him and his team a lot of success!