12 August 2010: The World Bank’s first Joint Implementation (JI) Gas Recovery Project in the Komsomolskoye Oil Field was approved by the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.

The project will build a new infrastructure to process and transport the recovered gas from the field to the domestic gas market through Gazprom pipelines, generating up to four million Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) by 2012, of which the World Bank’s Carbon Funds are the buyers. These ERUs can be used by the Participants of the Carbon Funds for compliance under the Kyoto Protocol or in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

The Russian Federation is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world and this project is part of a larger scheme to reduce GHGs in the country. In February, the Russian Federation launched a JI project tender through the state-owned Sberbank, hoping to attract companies to cut additional GHG emissions in return for ERUs. In total, 37 JI projects aimed at reducing emission by the equivalent of 74.7 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2012 were submitted for approval. Of these, 15 projects were approved, with the potential to generate 30 million ERUs by 2012. [World Bank Press Release]