Price: £5.00
Standard: VCS+Social Carbon
Location: China
Project web site
Details:
The Rural China Micro and Small Scale Hydropower Grouped Project consists of 95 individual hydropower plants. All projects are run-of-river hydropower stations, spread widely across the less developed rural areas of south-western China, consisting of four provinces. Out of 95 hydropower plants, 9 projects are located in Yunnan, 67 in Chongqing, 13 in Sichuan and 6 in Guizhou Province. The entire Grouped Project complies with the VCS. By exporting electricity from a renewable energy source to the Southern China Power Grid (SCPG) and to the Central China Power Grid (CCPG), the project activity achieves greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions by displacing electricity from fossil fuel based power plants connected to the grid.
Contribution of the project activity to sustainable development:
Besides its contribution to climate change mitigation, the project activity will foster sustainable development in China as follows:
Socio-economic aspects:
· The project activity generates income and employment opportunities during both the project construction and operation periods, making a contribution to poverty alleviation in the region;
· The project activity leads to sustainable investment in a remote and underdeveloped region, which otherwise would not have happened in the absence of project activity. The generated electricity is fed into the regional
grid through the local grid, thereby improving the grid stability and availability of electricity to local consumers (villagers and suburban inhabitants), which will provide new opportunities for economic activities to be setup in the area, thereby resulting in greater local employment and a clean development. As part of the construction, the project developers also upgrade access roads and community infrastructure.
· The proposed hydropower Grouped Project leads to a diversification of China’s energy supply, which is
dominated by fossil fuel based power plants and the project activity contributes in a sustainable manner to bridging the gap between supply and demand of power on a regional and national level.
· The project activity contributes to local economic sustainability in rural areas, contributing to decentralization of economic power in China.
· The projects bring a source of income to the communities and contribute to the development of new skills. By creating wider opportunities for income generation, local people are able to upgrade houses, buy consumer goods and send children to school etc.
· Through the reliable, affordable power brought to remote communities the villagers have access to more electrical appliances, which improves their quality of life and eases the daily domestic burden.
· The projects support technological and know-how transfer from other regions.
· In Yunnan sustainable hydropower stations improve the livelihoods of ethnic minority communities.
Yunnan has an abundance of water resource and diverse ethnic minority groups, which live with traditions born from their long history; they are partially self-sufficient and partially supported by the local government. Because of the difficult-to-access mountain regions, many of them are isolated from the outside world, so the introduction of small hydro stations gives them a chance to gain moderate experiences of modernization. They can now enjoy the convenience of electrical energy, and more importantly encourage cultural integration. The project builds bridges between the predominant Han nationality and minority groups by creating chances of working jointly and exchanging ideas.
Environmental aspects:
· Use of a renewable energy source helps in conservation of natural resources. In China, more than 80% 2 of total electricity production is derived from coal-based power plants. This project, in addition to its inherent contribution to climate change mitigation, implicates environmental benefits for the country’s air, soil and water resources. The project increases the share of renewable energy generation in China while making a contribution to avoiding the construction of new fossil-fuel-fired power plants. Compared to these power plants, the project
reduces CO2, SOx and NOx emissions significantly, thus consequently mitigating air pollution and its adverse impacts on human health.
· As hydropower projects produce no end products in the form of solid waste (ash, etc.), they do not have the problem of solid waste disposal encountered by most other sources of power. In view of the above explanation, the project participants consider that the project activity profoundly contributes to the sustainable development
of the region.