2008-12-18

Fortum offsets air travel by supporting wind power projects in China

Fortum has compensated for the CO2 emissions from its air travelling during 2007. Accrued emissions have been offset by certified emission reducing measures in developing economies. In practice this means support for two Chinese wind power projects via Tricorona Climate Partner AB.

In 2007 Fortum set a target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from air travel by 10 per cent as part of its efforts to mitigate climate change. At the same time, Fortum also decided to offset the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from its personnel's air travel. In 2007 Fortum employees travelled almost 20 million kilometres by air and the consequent greenhouse gas emissions totalled 5,300 tonnes.

"Fortum works hard to reduce its emissions," says Carola Teir-Lehtinen, Corporate Vice President, Sustainability, "Air travel is one of the areas we can influence. By introducing state of the art videoconferencing facilities we can reduce air travel to internal meetings. When we do fly, however, our policy is to offset the emissions with the best carbon credits available, and that's why we chose Gold Standard CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) offsets.

The chosen projects are wind farms, in the Ningxia and Fujian provinces of China. The projects consist of over 100 wind turbines with a total capacity of ca 100 MW. Together, the projects are expected to generate almost 200 GWh electricity per year and result in carbon dioxide emission reductions of over 180,000 tonnes annually. The projects also contribute to sustainable development in their local areas by improving their infrastructure, reducing pollution and providing new employment opportunities both during the construction and operation phases. The plants became operational in late 2007 and were registered for CDM and Gold Standard in early 2008.

The Gold Standard is an independent non-profit organisation, whose purpose is to identify and certify the very best carbon offset projects. It is backed by over 50 NGOs from around the world and its two primary founding members are WWF International and Greenpeace International.

Tricorona, headquartered in Stockholm, is a global leader in developing emission reduction projects within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol, with a portfolio of over 68 millions of tons of emission reductions from over 150 projects.

Information about the company: Fortum Oyj