February 15, 2008 (Financial Express) – India’s carbon market is growing faster than even information technology, bio technology and BPO sectors as 850 projects with an investment of a whopping Rs 65,000 crore are in pipeline. The revenue from 200 projects is estimated at $2 billion till 2012, according to Prodipto Ghosh, member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change. Ghosh was speaking at the ‘Carbon Credit Conference: The way beyond CDM’ here on Friday.Ghosh said that the Bali Action Plan intended to involve US and developing countries in the national/international actions for mitigation in an agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change but outside the Kyoto Protocol.
For the US, requirement is for accountable “nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions,” with comparability of effort with other developed countries, “taking into account differences in national circumstances.”
As far as developing countries is concerned, Ghosh said that accountability for mitigation actions “in the context of sustainable development” is subject to accountability for technology transfer, finance, and capacity building.
Dun & Bradstreet, in its presentation, said that India is actively participating in clean development mechansim (CDM) activity (about 300 projects with 34 million certified emission reduction (CERs) registered per year). India has emerged as a world leader in reduction of greenhouse gases by adopting CDM in the past few years. The number of Indian projects in the fields of biomass, cogeneration, hydropower and wind power eligible for getting carbon credits now stands at 225 with a potential of 225 million CERs.
However, Dun & Bradstreet said that despite being preferred by most companies in the UK, Germany, Japan and Denmark, India is lagging behind due to its project rejection rate, which is as high as 50%. Even after getting approval from the government, the validation from the CDM executive board is not guaranteed. However, to help Companies tackle this problem, many domestic investment banking firms have entered into joint ventures with global majors and are providing financial and technical consulting services for carbon credit deals.
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