Cheng Loong Corp., one of Taiwan's largest paper manufacturers, announced Oct. 21 that it is the first company on the island validated to sell its carbon dioxide emission rights.
According to company president Tsai Tong-ho, Cheng Loong is now Voluntary-Carbon-Standard-certified and will sell its voluntary carbon offsets in New York's over-the-counter market. "This move is in keeping with our corporate goal of becoming a leading paper packaging firm by efficiently using resources and contributing to society," he said. "More Taiwanese companies should pay greater attention to carbon dioxide emissions."
The VCS initiative, released in 2007, is meant to set a minimum benchmark for the quality of carbon offsets and is designed to offer a basic set of guidelines, focused primarily on lowering transaction costs and carbon prices to consumers. The program was founded by the Climate Group, the International Association for Emission Trading, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
While offsetting is a key component of the VCS program, the founding partners see it as only the third step in a strategy to reduce emissions. The first two are reducing emissions by cutting consumption, or improving efficiency, and then greening up electricity supply by using renewable energy.
Tsai explained that Cheng Loong, with the assistance of Environmental Resources Management Group Inc. (a global provider of environmental, health and safety, risk and social consulting services), qualified for VCS certification after meeting criteria for carbon emission reduction and fuel efficiency. He stated that the company carried out thermal recycling to cut carbon dioxide emissions at its sewage processing facility in northern Taiwan's Taoyuan County. This was achieved by investing in new technology and turning firedamp, or flammable gas, extracted from sewage into fuel for steam boilers.
An ERM spokesperson stated that companies in Asia could join the voluntary carbon offset market via either the Clean Development Mechanism or VCS. CDM is an agreement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing companies in countries already committed to the greenhouse gas reduction agreement to buy carbon dioxide emission rights, with trading to be supervised by the United Nations.
VCS provides an alternative for businesses of non-Kyoto Protocol signatories to voluntarily satisfy the agreement's regulations on carbon emission.
Cheng Loong estimated that 200,000 metric tons of carbon offsets could be accumulated within the period of its VCS certification on a market turnover of around US$1 million. According to a report by the British research institute Ecosystem Marketplace, the global trade volume of carbon offsets is expected to exceed 150 million metric tons in 2008, which is 10 times higher than 2006.
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