Finland said Monday it has signed a contract with a Chinese company to purchase 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide credits over ten years from 2009.

The project is designed to promote the use of methane fermentation reactors and cooking utensils in a mountainous area in China's south central Hunan Province. The reactor can convert organic waste materials such as livestock excrement to methane.

According to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a key component of the Kyoto Protocol, a country with an emission-reduction or emission-limitation commitment under the Protocol could implement an emission-reduction project in developing countries.

Such projects can earn saleable certified emission reduction credits(CERs), each equivalent to one tonne of CO2, which can be counted toward meeting Kyoto targets. For the moment, the prices of benchmark CERs are holding up around 19 euros a tonne.

The Hunan project will be implemented by Beijing Hebaiyi Ecological Energy Technology Development Co., Ltd, said the Finland embassy to China. The company will popularize the use of methane fermentation reactor and cooking utensils with 210,000 families in the mountainous area in Hunan.

Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries have committed to reducing emissions by a minimum of five percent by 2012 from 1990 levels.

By investing in the Hunan project, Finland voiced the hope of participating in the post-Kyoto carbon market at an early date so as to show its continued support to the market.

According to statistics of UN CDM Executive Board(EB) on Monday, China has registered 433 CDM projects at the UN Executive Board as a host party. The expected average annual reductions of carbon dioxide from those projects are 147,318,958 tonnes.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2009)