CDM registration for Ormat’s Amatitlan, Guatemala project

Alexander Richter 23 Dec 2008

Ormat just announced that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) officially registered Ormat’s Armatitlan Geothermal Project in Guatemala as a Clean Development Mechanism in mid-December 2008.

The CDM was designed to provide businesses from developed countries with an economic incentive to help reduce carbon emissions and increase sustainable development in countries that don’t have emission reduction targets.

Offsetting emissions of approximately 83,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, the project is now eligible to receive certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2, which can be traded or sold. The project, so Ormat, has a long term contract to sell all Amatitlan’s CERs to buyers domiciled in Europe. Those buyers are in most cases sovereigns.

The Amatitlan project is the first CDM project for Ormat, one of the few CDM registered geothermal projects worldwide and the only project in Guatemala that is CDM registered. It was developed on a “build-own-operate” basis and comprises a 20 MW geothermal power plant, with a long-term power purchase agreement with the Guatemalan Instituto Nacional de Electrificatio.

Source: PR Newswire (Ormat press statement)