Planetair’s portfolio includes Gols Standard foreign renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Gold Standard carbon credits are the highest quality carbon credits currently available for voluntary offsets, and the projects they fund constitute the premium projects on the market. The method requires that renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies also lead to sustainable development for local communities (such as better living standards, knowledge transfer, job creation and pollution reduction).

The Pacific islands region faces increasing environmental and socioeconomic pressures sharpened by global climate change. The UN recognizes small island developing states as being particularly vulnerable to climate change. Already severely affected by climate variability and extreme tropical weather events, they remain extremely vulnerable to future changes in the regional climate and to rising sea levels.
 

Besides replacing dirty fossil fueled energy with sustainable power, the wind project tackles several environmental and societal issues. To strengthen civil society and indigenous Kanak rights, the company supports local and regional initiatives addressing employment, youth and community activities. In order to save nature and landscape partly disordered by former deforestation and mining activities, the infrastructure of the wind farms is based on existing roads only to limit erosion.
 

New Caledonia is located in a hurricane hot spot; the wind turbines used in the project are specifically designed for this type of climate, meaning that the whole wind farm can be tilted down within a few hours in the event of an extreme weather alert. This smart engineering approach makes the project a perfect match for the location and ensures that the nations green power supply can sustain an extreme climate event such as a hurricane.

The project now serves as an example for similar projects throughout the South Pacific, and is seen as the symbol of an environmentally respectful development to which local tribes are really sensitive.

Even with its privileged situation of a long windy coast line, Taiwan still relies to over 50% on its rich but dirty coal resources to fuel its growing economy. Now, pioneering wind parks have started to harness the untapped sustainable wind energy on the island’s west coast to enable and promote a less carbon intensive future for the nation.
 

In addition to their positive impact on the global climate, the project generates jobs and is engaged in benefitting the surrounding environment, e.g. by regularly cleaning the beaches from the waste of civilization.
 

These and other activities have generated high public interest in the project, making it even a tourist destination for the general Taiwanese public, with guided tours and a promote approach for the further sustainable development of the country.
 

Technically, the two wind farms consist of 65 wind turbines, each having a capacity of 2.3MW. At full capacity, the aggregated output of the project is expected to be 507 GWh / year, which is delivered to the regional state electricity authority, Taipower.
 

For its outstanding features, the project has been labeled with the Geneva based Gold Standard, the strictest project standard in the carbon world.

Only a few years ago, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages could smell the open lagoons used for clearing the starch wastewater. Today, not only the local air and water quality has improved significantly, at the same time the starch plant managed to reduce its fossil fuel use by up to 4700 litres per day. In addition, the project and the resulting carbon revenues generated jobs for locals and support social and educational activities in the community to enable sustainable development.
 

Technically, the project activity involves the installation of two closed anaerobic wastewater treatment facility (Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket technology) at a starch manufacturing plant with a large output of waste water. Before the installation of the project the wastewater in the plant was treated through cascading open lagoons with a retention time of more than a year. The mix of the lagoon size, atmospheric and water temperature, resulted in an anaerobic environment in the ponds. These conditions led to methane generation from the organic content of the wastewater which was steadily released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 21 times stronger than CO2.
 

Now, the captured methane can be used for clean energy production in two burners on the plant site, replacing fossil fuel for heat generation to dry the starch. Thus, the emission reduction project has a double effect, keeping methane from heating up our climate and at the same time avoiding the burning of thousands of tons of fossil fuel per year.

Rich coal reserves made the province one of the places suffering most from the country’s economic boom but also a place for innovation in the industry, as this project shows. Antai, a steel mill in the heart of the province, decided to assume responsibility and act. By installing modern technology, training their workers and developing a carbon mitigation project according to the strict rules of the Gold Standard, they not only managed to reduce their CO2 emissions but at the same time improved the life of local communities.

At Antai, employees receive salaries and social insurance packages (with medical insurance and a retirement fund) above Chinese standards, get regular training on safety and technical issues, and are even given educational grants. In addition, the company supports students from the region with scholarships and funds the local musical orchestra. And every local can already tell the success of the waste gas recovery project: the air has become much cleaner over the past years.
 

Technically, the project consists of two 25 MW steam turbine units and four 75t/h gas-fired boilers. The waste gas comes primarily from the facility’s blast furnaces, with some additional surplus gas from steel converters and coke ovens.The electricity and steam generated by the project are totally consumed in the steel mill’s production processes and thus reduce its power consumption from the grid. In the absence of the project, a large amount of combustible waste gas would be flared or even released directly to the atmosphere, polluting the air and contributing heavily to global warming.

At a time when China is sensing the pressure to balance economy and environment, a huge number of emission reduction measures are being implemented with the help of carbon finance. One of them is this Gold Standard waste-heat capture project at the Yingxi glassworks plant. Through this project, the company has reduced its fossilfuelled power consumption by an impressive 76,000 MWh annually.
 

In addition to the benefits to the climate and environment, the project owner is also involved in sustainable development of the region. Amongst other activities, the company is supporting schools, elderly people and the village’s infrastructure with financial aid and the provision of machinery to villagers at no cost.
 

The project generates electricity by recovering and utilising waste heat from the glass smelting furnaces. Converted into electricity, it meets part of the internal demand, thereby displacing the electricity that was previously generated by a captive coal gangue power plant. Four recovery boilers, with two sets of condensing turbine generator units have been built and now provide an installed capacity of 12 MW, consisting of two 6 MW units. Before the installation of the emission reduction project, the waste heat generated by four glass production line furnaces was not utilised but simply vented into the atmosphere.

In Honduras 65 percent of the consumed energy comes from fuelwood, primarily used for cooking purposes. Given this, reducing the need to harvest trees for fuelwood will make the forests more sustainable.
 

Traditional cooking stoves that use fuelwood are being replaced with energy-efficient cooking stoves at reduced prices. This makes them affordable for every family, and the cost of a cooking stove is typically paid back through fuel savings within two months. The new stoves are 50 percent more efficient than the traditional open fire system, and they require less cooking time because of their thermal design.

In addition to being more energy efficient, the modern cooking stoves emit less smoke, leading to a healthier cooking environment, which reduces respiratory and eye diseases and improves general hygiene.
 

Compared to a traditional stove, the new stove reduces poisonous carbon monoxide and particulate emissions inside a home by 79% and methane emissions by 94%. It is estimated that the project will build up to 2,000 stoves per month in 2012 and reach 200 rural villages (located in a mountainous region) by the end of 2012.

Ninety-five percent of Ugandans rely on wood and charcoal for cooking. Most solid fuel is burned using inefficient technologies, causing environmental, health and economic challenges. The use of wood and charcoal for cooking is driving deforestation and putting pressure on Uganda’s remaining forests.

The cookstove project began in 2006. Since then, the project organisers have managed to develop a sustainable stove-manufacturing enterprise and create distribution channels for the dissemination of fuel-efficient cookstoves throughout Uganda. Working closely with local partners, the capacity of local producers to market and distribute ccokstoves has improved and social marketing campaigns to drive demand have been implemented. Prior to the development of the cookstove project, fuel-efficient cookstoves were not available in Uganda.
 

To date, the project has distributed 88,000 cooking stoves in urban and peri-urban areas where charcoal use is endemic, reaching over 440,000 individuals with clean cooking technology.

The poorest Ugandan families spend as much as 15 per cent of their income on cooking fuel.

The project’s primary goal is to reach low-income families and organisations that cannot normally afford to purchase improved stove and water treatment technologies. The prospect of future carbon revenues has allowed the project to secure investment for subsidising the manufacture and sale of high-quality and efficient stoves and of water treatment products. To date, already 30,000 stoves have been distributed. At full capacity, the project will be able to provide clean air and water to more than 300,000 Kenyan families.

Improved cooking stoves are distributed at reduced prices, enabling poor families to cut their firewood demand by about 50%. This in turn takes the burden off the women and children, who traditionally collect the firewood, reduces deforestation rates and improves the indoor air quality.
 

In rural Kenya, more than 65% of the population do not have access to drinking water. To increase water treatment and improve local’s health, chlorine dispensers have been installed at communal water points, such as springs and boreholes. A local volunteer works to continually educate the community about the benefits of the dispenser, promote its use, and to maintain the supply of chlorine. In addition to the health benefits achieved, this cuts further the demand on firewood, which is otherwise used to sterilise water by boiling.

The lower rates of deforestation are estimated to relieve our global climate from about 20,000 tCO2e per year.

According to the 2007 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), deforestation is responsible for nearly 20% of greenhouse gases.

This project aims at reforesting degraded and unused land in urban and semi-urban areas, as well as upgrading forest ecosystems and creating green spaces in the greater Montreal metropolitan area. The project takes place in the administrative regions of the Laurentians, Lanaudière and the Montérégie.

The plantations allow the creation of green corridors that favor a gradual return of biodiversity, notably the Kirtland's Warbler, a bird species that is on the verge of extinction that reproduces only in young jack pines. The project will also contribute to reduced runoff and cleaner air.

These forestry credits come from the first and only Gold Standard project in Canada. The "validated" credits generated by the project and offered here evidence the GHG compensation that will occur throughout the duration of the project, i.e. from 2014 to 2064.