Nepal will now make an income of approximately 4.2 million Nepali rupees (600,000 US dollars) annually through sale of carbon saved from reducing the carbon emission by the use of biogas, an official said here Sunday.

"This opportunity has been obtained after the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Convention approved two proposals on biogas presented by Nepal," Madan Bahadur Basnet, executive director of the Alternative Energy Promotion Center (AEPC), a non-government organization, told reporters.

AEPC has presented two proposals regarding the sale of carbon saved from the use of biogas, Basnet noted, adding that under the first proposal, carbon would be saved from the use of biogas by installing 9,708 biogas plants and in the second proposal carbon would be saved from the use of biogas from 9,688 biogas plants.

The World Bank would annually provide 600,000 U.S. Dollars for the carbon saved from 19,396 biogas plants in the first phase as agreed to earlier by the World Bank to buy 1 million tones of carbon, Basnet said.

Nepal has been able to derive the extra income after making the World Bank agree to buy the carbon at the rate of 7 U.S. dollars per ton in the meeting of the Executive Committee of the CDM under the Kyoto Convention, he noted.

Emission of Carbon dioxide is reduced by 4.99 tons from every plant annually.

So far 150,000 biogas plants have been installed in Nepal and more could be registered, so the preparations are being made for presenting the third and fourth proposals on the sale of carbon within the 2-3 months.

The income from the sale of carbon is enough for meeting the cost of installing 25,000 biogas plants annually, which would again reduce carbon dioxide emission and save carbon that can be again sold out.

There is a possibility of installing some 1.9 million biogas plants in Nepal and an income equivalent to billions of dollars could be made through the use of biogas and sale of carbon in the context of the increasing demand of carbon trade at the international level, he added.

Source: Xinhua