Bhutan is expected to earn about 56,000 Euro every year through electrification of rural households. Rural Electrification Project of Bhutan has been registered as a Clean Development Mechanism Project under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, last year. The convention pays projects which generates energy from a clean source without any carbon emissions.
The Department of Renewable Energy and Bhutan Power Corporation had been working with a Japanese company since 2007 to register the project under Clean Development Mechanism of UNFCCC.
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Under the project, 30,000 rural households will be electrified. Of the total, 97 percent have already been electrified through grid extension to earn carbon credits.
“Carbon credits are actually the certificates which replace fossil fuel emission or the pollution that is emitted into the atmosphere. So when we say carbon credits you are essentially meaning that we are not generating energy using polluting sources of energy,” said Department of Renewable Energy’s Director, Karma Tshering.
He said using clean energy source substitutes the dirty energy, so that’s why we can get credit for not using energy from the dirty sources but by using energy from the clean sources, which in the case of Bhutan is coming from hydro power which is 100 percent clean and green energy.”
The project is therefore expected to reduce carbon emissions.
A carbon credit of approximately 18,000 metric tonnes will be earned in the next one year. One tonne of carbon credit will fetch around three Euro depending upon the market. The credit generation period of the project is from November 1, 2014 to October 31, 2021.
