Clean and independent energy supply for farmers
With the support from this project, 15,555 biogas digesters have been constructed in rural households in the 20 towns belonging to the city of Haikou in Hainan province. The project helped farmers to build methane digesters where organic matter including manure and wastes are decayed anaerobically. Every household has an average of 2.5 pigs, the manure of which is fed into the digester with a volume of eight cubic metres, producing enough biogas to meet one household's thermal energy demand.
Before the project started, the farmers stored the manure in deep pits with anaerobic conditions for more than three months, which caused large amounts of methane emissions to the atmosphere. The project helps avoid these methane emissions, but also CO2 from cooking. The biogas produced in the digesters is used for cooking meals and heating water, replacing the use of coal stoves which was used in absence of the project activity.
Project Standard
The project contributes to the the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
In biogas facilities, biomass is fermented into biogas in sealed digesters. Biomass may consist of organic waste or dung from cows or other animals. In countries like India or Vietnam, families use the gas from small biogas plants for cooking. This reduces CO2 emissions that would be produced by cooking with wood or charcoal. Biogas plants also prevent methane from escaping into the atmosphere, as is the case when organic waste is stored in an open pit. Instead, the gas is fed from the closed digesters to specific cookers and thus provides an independent and renewable source of energy.
The project aims to contribute to these United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
TypeReduction
LocationChina, Haikou
StandardGold Standard
TechnologyBiogas
Registry ID2664
Estimated annual emission reductions53,680 t CO₂
Four criteria for projects to meet quality thresholds
The life cycle of a climate project
A climate project has a set life cycle consisting of various phases, from the feasibility assessment to the retirement of Verified Emission Reductions (VERs).
The project developer reviews the general feasibility of the project, the project design, and the financing. Then, the Project Design Document (PDD) is prepared, which contains all the basic information about the project, such as the objective, location, timeline, and duration.
In this phase, independent auditors examine the PDD and the information it contains. This phase often also involves field visits with on-side interviews and analyses. Auditors are accredited, impartial assessors who have to be approved by the relevant standard as a validation and verification body (VVB). TÜV Nord/Süd, S&A Carbon LLC., and SCS Global Services are examples of VVBs."
Once validated, the project can be registered with a standard such as the Verified Carbon Standard or the Gold Standard. All high-quality climate projects are based on international standards. They provide the framework for project design, construction, carbon accounting, and monitoring. Recognised standards make the climate project system and the projects themselves resilient, traceable, and credible.
After the climate project has been registered, the monitoring begins. Here, the project developers monitor and document the data of the project activities and progress. The duration of the monitoring phase varies from project to project: it can cover two years, but documentation over five or seven years is also possible.
At the end of each monitoring phase, a VVB checks and assesses whether the values and project activities stated in the monitoring report are correct. As with validation, visits to the project site are often part of the verification process.
Once verified, the emission reductions that were confirmed in the verification phase can be issued as VERs. The steps of monitoring, verification, and issuance of VERs are repeated regularly and are therefore considered as a cycle.
Once a VER has been used, it must be retired. This process is also reflected in the registry. If the financing of a climate project is done through ClimatePartner, the VERs are bundled in a system certified by TÜV Austria and then retired on a regular basis. This ensures that each VER can no longer be sold and is only used once, preventing double counting.
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