WB, China sign greenhouse gas reduction purchase deal

A Chinese company has signed a greenhouse gas emission reductions purchase agreement with the World Bank, acting on behalf of the Italian Carbon Fund, for a project that is expected to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 61,860 tons a year, the bank said Tuesday.

Under the agreement on the China Nanjing Steel Converter Gas Recovery Project, the Nanjing Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. (NISCO) will introduce a converter gas recovery system to collect the gas from the steel production process to generate electricity.

The electricity will partially meet the company's power needs, it said.

Liu Yuejian, a NISCO project manager and senior engineer, said the project would bring economic revenue and the transfer of advanced technologies, and was an incentive to achieve sustainable development and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing primary energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental pollution, and achieving sustainable development were the motivation for the company to be involved in the project, said Liu.

The Chinese government is committed to reducing energy consumption to gross domestic product ratio by 20 percent in the next five years.

Jolle Chassard, manager of the World Bank's carbon finance unit, said China was the world's largest steel producer with an output of more than 200 million tons a year, but operational efficiency was very low.

The NISCO project for the Italian Carbon Fund would be a prototype for energy efficiency projects in the Chinese steel sector, said Chassard.

The Italian government-operated Italian Carbon Fund, would purchase a credit for 572,205 tons of carbon dioxide over 10 years till 2015, and was initially funding emission reductions from the first component of NISCO's project, said the bank.

This amount would likely double with a purchase from the second component as well, it said.

Source: Xinhua