Environmental Standards

UPC was founded on the principles of creating a better world by producing clean green energy and in doing so, reducing carbon emissions, particulate emissions and other pollutants generally associated with the production of fossil fuel derived electricity.

However, building any large scale power plant has its potential environmental consequences and to ensure that we make as little impact on the environment and the people around us, UPC adheres to the strictest environmental standards in everything that we do. UPC takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously and consequently UPC has committed to complying with the exacting standards of the International Finance Corporation’s Environmental Guidelines on Social Responsibility and Environmental sustainability. UPC has a Chief Environmental Officer, responsible for ensuring that UPC adheres to all these standards and audits of our performance against the IFC standards are performed regularly.

Carbon credits

A direct measure of our impact on the carbon reduction capability of our projects is the production of carbon credits associated with our electricity generation. Where the economics of a particular project warrant it, UPC is able to register the project with the United Nations under its Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism to sell Certified Emission Reductions units referred to as carbon credits. This sale of these carbon credits provides an additional revenue stream to bolster the economics of the relevant project.