OREANDA-NEWS. On 30 June 2009 was announced, that Ilim Group had submitted an application to the Economic Development Ministry to include the completed new evaporators investment project in Koryazhma into the list of projects that comply with Kyoto Protocol requirements. When the application is approved, the company would receive quotas for greenhouse gases emission reduced as a result of the project, and would be ableable to trade those quotas internationally.

In the near future Ilim Group will submit similar applications for investment projects completed in Bratsk (two bark boilers reconstruction) and Ust-Ilimsk (building of new heat exchangers and bark boiler reconstruction).

All these projects are in operation and already reduce volumes of greenhouse gases emission. For example the new evaporating station project in Koryazhma (1.1 billion rubles), reduces greenhouse gases emissions by 800 thousand tonnes in 5 years.

"For our company, taking part in Kyoto Protocol means new opportunities to improve ecology in the regions we operate, because it provides additional motivation to modernize. It also fully complies with the State's position regarding implemention of the best existing environment-friendly technologies in Russian companies", said Paul Herbert, CEO of Ilim Group.

Note: The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conference on treaty is intended to achieve "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

181 parties have ratified the protocol (including Russia), which was initially have been adopted for use on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and which entered into force on 16 February 2005. Under Kyoto, industrialized countries agreed to reduce their collective GHG emissions by 5.2% compared to the year 1990. The goal is to lower overall emissions of greenhouse gases averaged over 2008 to 2012, after then a new agreement would be signed, as expected.