OREANDA-NEWS. November 13, 2009. Gazprom Marketing & Trading Limited (GM&T), a subsidiary of Gazprom Group, and ecolutions Trading GmbH (ecolutions), a subsidiary of ecolutions GmbH & Co. KGaA, are pleased to announce that today they have concluded a cooperation agreement relating to the development of emissions reduction projects in China.

Under the cooperation agreement, ecolutions will, through equity investment or carbon credit off-take, develop the emission reduction projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), while GM&T will provide a route-to-market for the certified emissions reductions (CERs) that are generated by the projects.

Scientists foresee that for an effective limitation of carbon emissions globally, countries such as China need to reduce their dependency on coal and significantly progress the development of renewable energy. CDM is playing an important catalyst in this respect. The development of emission reduction projects by ecolutions and GM&T will further support the growth of clean and renewable technologies in the developing world. The projects already under the cooperation agreement are currently expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by several million tonnes during the current Kyoto phase, with scope for further expansion.

"We are happy to enter into this cooperation agreement with ecolutions to complement our existing work developing emission reduction projects in the South and East Asia regions. The trading and optimisation capabilities we can offer combined with the local and project financing expertise of ecolutions creates a good platform for long term cooperation in China and beyond", said Vitaly Vasiliev, CEO of Gazprom Marketing & Trading.

Mr. Dietram Oppelt, CEO of ecolutions said, "The cooperation with a leading global energy company is an important strategic step for us. ecolutions has established a strong platform to develop renewable energy projects and carbon assets in China and India. Over the last two years we have also built up a significant pipeline of projects. The partnership with GMT enables us to effectively sell the carbon credits and make the projects commercially viable. We look forward to scaling up our joint efforts."