First Farmers Holdings Corp. has commissioned a 21-megawatt (MW) bagasse-based co-generation plant, becoming the first sugar mill in Negros to commercially dispatch power and sell carbon credits. The plant has been gradually supplying power to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines in the last three weeks.

Of the plant’s 21-MW generation capacity, the sugar mill uses only 3.5 to five MW for its milling operations, and even lower at merely two MW during the off-milling season. First Farmers has a power supply agreement with the Central Negros Electric Cooperative or CENECO for the purchase of an initial five MW, from 2008 to 2010.

The sugar mill has a contract to sell carbon credits from its co-generation plant to Spanish power company Endesa under the Clean Development Mechanism. Under the contract, the sugar mill committed to sell 500,000 tons of certified emission reduction (CER) credits to Endesa.