World Bank, Landbank sign deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in RP

MANILA, Philippines - The Land Bank of the Philippines and the World Bank yesterday signed an agreement to purchase carbon credits in a project designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from landfills and livestock farms in the country.

The project called Methane Recovery from Waste Management will help address emissions of methane gas which is estimated to account for nearly one third of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the Philippines.

Among the largest sources of methane emissions in the Philippines is the decomposition of waste in landfills and livestock farms.

The project will provide incentives for piggeries and landfill operators to adopt cleaner technologies that capture methane and use it as fuel to generate electricity which will substitute for grid electricity generation that otherwise would be supplied by GHG emitting fossil fuel power plants.

The Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) otherwise known as carbon credits, derived from the projects under the framework of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol will be purchased by the World Bank on behalf of the Spanish Carbon Fund as a way of encouraging investments in technologies and business models that help address climate change.

The project will be managed and implemented by Landbank, with WB providing a funding of 2,437,500 euros from 2010-2013.

Landbank president and chief executive officer Gilda E. Pico said they are “the very first bank in the Philippines to venture and seal a carbon sale-purchase agreement with a carbon buyer for CDM projects.”

WB country director Bert Hofman part said he is happy to have signed the agreement with Landbank, stressing that the deal concretely demonstrates how carbon finance could be used to encourage private and public investments into projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.