TOTAL

WE CHOOSE TO OFFSET CARBON:

By making biogas work for farming communities in India

Telangana

Total voluntarily pledged to offset the CO₂ emissions from all its company airplane travel .

(approx. 50,000 tons of CO₂/year).

At the end of 2017,

The Group signed a 10-year carbon offset pledge with the GoodPlanet Foundation, one of the biggest CO₂ offset organizations.

We are making it happen by funding and managing a project in the heart of India to build biodigesters in the rural regions of Telangana.

Telangana

One goal:

8 400 biodigesters to help almost 50 000 people

One goal:

8 400 biodigesters to help almost 50 000 people

We chose India for two reasons: it plays a crucial role in achieving the Paris Climate Accord goals and the GoodPlanet Foundation already had experts on the ground. The GoodPlanet Foundation works with a local NGO called SKG Sangha that specializes in installing biodigesters. The biodigesters are being built with help from the people they will benefit: local families with two or more cows. They will then power them with manure from their animals. Produced through fermentation, the biogas will replace wood and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) for cooking and hot water.

This technology makes biogas out of cattle manure

Biodigesters are made by pouring concrete into molded sheet metal. Local tradespeople are commissioned to produce the molds.

Biodigesters create economic opportunity

Finished molds are brought to the villages where each one can make around 100 biodigesters.

Indian tradespeople will manufacture some 80 molds for the project.

Biodigesters

create biogas

They are concrete tanks used for fermenting organic material. Methane-producing microbes synthesize the biogas (CH4) during the fermentation process. Biodigesters have three parts:

-an inlet tank

-a fermentation tank

-a digestate storage tank.

Reduction of deforestation.

Benefits for

the environment:

Women and children save time collecting firewood – or even stop altogether.

Benefits for

the community:

By decreasing the risk of respiratory and eye infections caused by indoor air pollution, it improves the living conditions of local populations, especially women and children.