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New Delhi: Delhi Metro has earned Rs 3 crore annually in carbon credits since 2009. The railway project is the first transport project in the world that was registered under the United Nations programme for dealing in the carbon market.

Metro chief E Sreedharan said that use of regenerative braking system in trains that results in power production was one project that had been certified for carbon trading and another project had received in-principal approval.

“Metro has brought about a massive conversion of road-users to Metro-users . For 15 lakh passengers that we see on the Metro, 1.5 lakh vehicles are off the road. This leads to a huge reduction in emissions. The project has received approval and should start earning us carbon credits soon,” he said.

Metro has also used flyash bricks in construction activity which, the corporation says, will save 3.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 10 years.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation officials said the braking system had saved 90,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted. “The certification report was given on February 22, 2009, by Germanybased validation organization, TUV NORD, which conducted an audit on behalf of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It found that DMRC prevented emission of 90,004 tonnes of CO2 from 2004 to 2007 by adopting regenerative braking systems in trains. In 2008, emission of an additional 39,000 tonnes of CO2 was prevented. With the complete operation of phase-II , we would save close to one lakh tonnes of CO2 emissions,” said DMRC officials.

Explaining how the system works, an official said, “Whenever Metro trains apply brakes, three phase-traction motors installed on the trains produce electrical energy which goes back into the overhead electricity lines. The regenerated power is used by accelerating trains on the same service line, saving overall energy in the system . About 30% power requirement is reduced,” he said.
Metro saved 1,12,500MW hours of power generation between 2004 and 2007. It can claim 4 lakh carbon credits over a 10-year period starting from December 2007.

The global economic slowdown has led to a new debate in governments and the private sector, with many arguing that the transition to a low carbon economy is too expensive or of less importance now. However, during the recovery from recession, our economic models must evolve to overcome unprecedented turmoil in global markets and simultaneously make provisions for climate-friendly sustainable growth.

Leaders around the world are absorbing the scale and scope of the economic, environmental and social challenges and recognising the need for bold and swift action to address climate change issues at a strategic level.

A CEO’s vision is a vital component to make a paradigm shift in management’s thinking on how to achieve a meaningful transformation to low carbon economy. The vision of leadership takes various dimensions.

An in-depth understanding of opportunities’ and threats’ posed by climate change: A CEO must take a long-term view of the potential physical impacts of climate change on business sustainability. He must visualise the evolution of market and industry under low carbon drivers and how these will influence growth, open up new market opportunities, stimulate technology innovations, reshape consumer preference and alter competitive landscape.

Develop Options

As climate change assumes strategic importance in boardroom discussions leadership should indeed re-think on the fundamental assumptions and challenge the basic paradigm in which business should operate in a carbon constrained future.

Develop strategic choice: An intense ideation among top level functionaries at various levels is required to develop portfolio of options (technology, process and product choice, markets) that will navigate transition to low carbon path. Collaborate and co-create solutions with stakeholders: The sheer scale of challenge and opportunities presented by climate change demands new form of alliances. Businesses working standalone can only hope to make incremental contributions to this challenge. This calls for the combined energy and skill of organisations and governments working together in a grand alliance.

Collaboration can reduce the burden of individual risk and help leaders make an early move with confidence and agility. Finally, leaders should recognise that collaboration creates leverage

Nigel Lawson believes that a case can be made for the introduction of an across-the-board carbon tax, initially at a relatively low level, provided that the proceeds of the tax are fully returned to the pockets of the people by a reduction in other taxes such as income tax.

If the objective is seriously to reduce global emissions, it would need to be a consumer-based tax, since in the globalised world economy industry is highly mobile, whereas individuals are far less so, he elaborates, in An Appeal to Reason (www.harpercollins.co.in).

Plucking the goose

The case for a carbon tax, says Lawson, is essentially twofold. First, the art of taxation is to pluck the goose so as to obtain the largest amount of feathers, with the smallest possible amount of hissing.

Harking back to this insight of Colbert, the great seventeenth century reformer of the French tax system, the author confesses to having used this as the basis for high-sounding health arguments to justify raising substantial revenues from tobacco taxation, always taking care not to pitch the duty so high that too many people gave up smoking, causing the tax actually to diminish. In the same way, if people like to feel that they are helping to save the planet by paying a carbon tax, they should not be deprived of the opportunity to do so, argues Lawson.

The only practical way

Secondly, levying a carbon tax is the only practical way of getting an indication of what it might take to change behaviour sufficiently seriously to cut back on carbon-based energy consumption, the author notes. He avers that even if the damage done by increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide is no greater than the economic and indeed human cost of forced decarbonisation, if the spirit of the age demands that something be done, if only as a gesture, to curb CO2 emissions, then a carbon tax imposed on a strictly revenue-neutral basis would do no great harm.

The Pune Municipal Corporation is eyeing funds from the World Bank, for the first time, for carbon credits it has been able to manage through energy saving by introducing flourescent lamps for streetlights. A World Bank team is scheduled to visit the city by the month-end to verify the civic body claim.

Report lists likely energy savings, cost-benefit analysis, sectors with most savings potential as well as drivers and barriers to ICT adoption.

Key highlights of the DESC Report include:

Mumbai, Dec. 13: The silence at Cancun on the future of the Kyoto Protocol has cast a cloud of uncertainty over the emission trading business (carbon credits) in India.

Experts are interpreting the situation in different ways, with the overall view being that the emission trading business has to stay in one form or the other, if carbon emissions are to be reduced. However, for now, the $2 billion per year market for Indian companies is in a jeopardy.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, polluting industries in Europe were allowed to pay polluters in developing countries such as India to cut their emissions. For cutting down their emission of carbon dioxide, Indian companies get emission-credits, which can be sold to European firms that need to reduce their pollution.

The prevailing price of emission credits is a little over 11 euros for a tonne of carbon dioxide. However, as the Kyoto Protocol hasnt been extended beyond 2012, it is not clear whether there will be a market for carbon credits post 2012. This market, currently worth $2 billion per year is in jeopardy because of the uncertainty, says Mr Kishore Butani of carbonyatra.com.

Earlier, buyers used to routinely purchase credits for the next ten years, but now they will be no longer willing to look beyond 2012, he adds. Another issue Mr Butani said is that every month India used to submit 20 projects for prior consideration for carbon credit to Kyoto.

A treadle water pump paid for by offsets has the power to transform poor communities

In the middle of a field on the plains of northern India, farmer Ram Dyal is making a point. One hand grabbing my sleeve, he wraps his other round a sturdy bamboo pole. “This”, he says, slapping it for emphasis, “has lifted poverty from our valley. It has lifted poverty from my home.”

He’s speaking through an interpreter, but looking me hard in the eyes to make sure I understand.

‘This’ is a simple treadle pump, costing around $30, which uses a couple of hours a day of human power – Ram Dyal’s feet and those of his family – to raise water from a tubewell to irrigate the fields.

It doesn’t sound that exciting – a bamboo frame and treadles, a simple two cylinder pump, and a long plastic tube thrust deep into the soil. But its effects are nothing short of revolutionary. Because by enabling crops to be grown all year round, rain or drought, it transforms the livelihoods of the rural poor.

A rural revolution

Take Ram Dyal’s family. Since installing the pump, they’ve diversified on a grand scale, growing garlic, cauliflower, cabbages, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs and spices, for their own consumption and for sale. As a result, everyone’s better fed, healthier – and much better off, thanks to selling surplus crops. This means they no longer have to decamp en masse in the dry season to work for an unreliable pittance as labourers on the notoriously hazardous building sites of one of India’s burgeoning cities. Instead, the children can stay at school, and the family no longer lives in fear of losing their land.

It’s a success story repeated, with variations, among hundreds of thousands of families right across northern India, where the relatively high water table lends itself to such technology. The pumps were developed by International Development Enterprises, India (IDEI) and now form the heart of a thriving network of energy entrepreneurs – manufacturers, retailers and installers – which has generated sales of approaching two million pumps in total. Studies by the World Bank and the Acumen Fund confirm that families with treadle pumps enjoy better nutrition, health, income and prospects than they did before.

It is a triumph of simplicity and scale: a straightforward, robust technology: living proof that dramatic improvements in quality of life don’t have to come from the use of fossil fuel. As such, it was a fitting winner of an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy (it was as an Awards Judge that I was lucky enough to see the project and talk to dozens of its beneficiaries at first hand).

Heart-warming stuff – but what has this got to do with offsets? The answer lies in the alternative: the diesel pumps, which, despite their shortcomings, had been spreading rapidly across the country. By replacing diesel, or removing the need for its adoption, the introduction of treadle pumps is avoiding the emission of substantial quantities of CO2 (around two-thirds of a tonne annually per pump). And that makes it an ideal candidate for offset funding.

Emissions credits bought on the voluntary market through ClimateCare have enabled IDEI to roll out the treadle pump programme much faster and further than would have been possible otherwise. It’s not been the only success story of this kind. Numerous other small-scale renewable energy schemes, from solar electricity to clean, energy-efficient cookstoves; from biogas digesters to micro hydro, have been boosted thanks to emissions credits sold by ClimateCare and other offset providers.

Together, they exemplify just what can be achieved through the best sort of voluntary offsets. Get them right, and they don’t simply result in measurable carbon reductions – important though these are. They also produce measurable improvements in the quality of life of ordinary people, particularly the rural poor in developing countries – and the quality of the environment on which they depend.

Who could possibly argue with that?

Enter the backlash

Brendan O’Neill, for one. Writing in Spiked Online in 2007, the influential commentator lambasted the treadle pump offsets as nothing short of “eco-enslavement”. ClimateCare, he argued, was “encouraging people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming (such as diesel pumps)… so (its clients) can fly around the globe with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand … doing hard physical labour … rather than using machines that emit carbon.”

“Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados … living it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches?”, added O’Neill with a flourish. “Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse…” And so on, at some length.

It was wonderfully polemical stuff – and wildly wide of the mark, at least as far as the facts were concerned (see box, ‘Hard work?…’). But O’Neill’s central claim – that carbon offsets were no more than a rich Westerner’s guilt-trip – struck a chord with many. It epitomised the backlash which erupted against offsets in the mid-2000s, and which still has considerable influence today.

In some respects, it was inevitable. Offsets had become a bit of a green fashion badge among celebrities, with everyone from Coldplay to Atomic Kitten releasing ‘carbon neutral’ albums. Such a surge of pop star glamour might have made life easier for the picture editors (the lissom bodies of the Kittens being a welcome alternative to yet another biogas digester), but it was a red rag to the bullish scepticism of your average journalist. Set against a lifestyle rich in planes and limos, offsets could easily look like a token gesture – and in some cases, they probably were.

O’Neill is no environmentalist – quite the contrary – but his views found echoes in the green movement too. From George Monbiot to Greenpeace, many argued that offsets effectively ‘legitimise’ carbon emissions: after all, why bother with the thorny task of reducing CO2 when you can simply pay someone to do it for you?

Some described it as ‘buying complacency’ – a guilt-free pass to carry on as normal. Monbiot and others even likened offsets to the indulgences sold to medieval sinners to earn time off purgatory. And one website memorably satirised the whole process by offering unfaithful partners the chance to become ‘Cheat Neutral’. Want to betray your spouse? Simply pay

The upcoming internal Metro link in Gurgaon, connecting Sikanderpur to NH-8, is touted to cut down on 40,000 tonnes of carbon emissions once it starts operations. Officials of the Rapid Metro Gurgaon Rail Limited (RMGL) claimed that with an expected ridership of 1.5 lakh passengers per day, the Metro system is expected not only to ease road congestion but also improve air quality in the city.

The project is registered with the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) for prior consideration in getting carbon credits and is estimated to reduce approximately 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission per year, an official statement stated.

Sarvesh Tiwari, RMGL spokesperson, said,

NEW DELHI: Railways has become one of the first government entities to successfully unveil a programme to cut down carbon consumption, helping it earn carbon credits.

The state-run transporter’s unique project of distributing around 14 lakh compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) in its residential colonies was approved by the executive board of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last month, paving the way to earn over one lakh carbon credits annually.

Apart from cutting down energy consumption and reduction in 1.04 tonnes of carbon di-oxide emission every year, the project started by railway minister Mamata Banerjee in December 2009 is seen as the biggest initiative in sensitising 14 lakh railway employees and their families about energy efficiency and clean environment.

After open competitive bidding, railways selected CQC, Malaysia, as the project developer and Philips India as the supplier of CFLs for free to railway employees living in its colonies.

Read more: Railways to earn 1L carbon credit a yr by distributing CFLs in it’s residential colony – The Times of India

Contine Reading at Hindustantimes

As nations seek an international agreement to reduce global warming pollution, one of the biggest issues on the table is transparency. When a country says it has reduced emissions, other nations want to know they mean it. Transparency and accountability provisions are an essential building block of an effective international system to address greenhouse gas emissions.

Last year at the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen, negotiators made a key breakthrough in the final hours. As a result of this breakthrough, developing countries will report national emissions inventories and emission reduction actions every two years. Making continued progress on this issue will be critical to a successful outcome in the climate conference now taking place in Cancun. As NRDC explains in their recent “Tracking Carbon with Transparency” fact sheet, “advancing progress toward robust measurement, reporting and verification systems is an imperative for the Cancun Climate Summit.”

Given all of that, it should come as no surprise that transparency and accountability have been among the major sticking points in the international negotiations this past year, with differing views among developed and developing countries on both the format and application of a monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system. India recently proposed a new monitoring system for major emitters that aims to bridge some of these major differences and help facilitate an agreement.

However, a Nov. 15 letter [PDF] from Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh to U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern and Deputy National Security Adviser Michael Froman clarifies that Indias proposed MRV system would be contingent on two things. First, India wants developed countries to provide money and technology assistance for developing countries. Second, most developed countries — with the exception of the United States — have signed on to the Kyoto Protocol and made commitments to reduce emissions. India wants nations which signed on to the treaty to make further emissions after the treaty expires in 2012. Without these two conditions, Ramesh wrote, the new MRV framework “will simply not fly.”

The gist of Indias proposal is that both developed and developing countries report their emission reduction efforts for international review, albeit subject to different reporting requirements and different reporting timelines. For example, developed countries would report on their emission reduction commitments and progress toward reaching those commitments, whereas developing countries would report on mitigation actions and the impact of those actions.

Commenting on Rameshs letter, Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, sounded a cautiously optimistic note. “I’m not sure if Ramesh’s thing is what solves this, but the fact that he’s trying to put forward a proposal that bridges the gap is positive.”

Countries are currently considering Indias proposal and it is unclear exactly how they will react. The U.S. remains insistent that any international climate deal include international verification of developing country emission reduction actions, but China and some other developing nations insist that actions they take domestically should not be subject to international monitoring. But this latest effort by India may put increased pressure on China to soften its position, especially if the other BASIC countries show strong support for the proposal.

Greenspaces, a proposed Information Technology Park in the National Capital Region, is a ‘Green’ special economic zone (SEZ): designed, developed and operated in a low carbon, sustainable way. It will have a 1.75 million square feet building which includes features such as rainwater harvesting, solar hot water systems etc and 1 megawatt solar power generation enough to meet electricity usage of over 500 homes from rooftop cells. And yes, Reva enthusiasts, even charging points for electric cars.

With developed nations clamouring for countries such as India and China to accept binding reductions in emissions, this kind of project is but a drop in the vast ocean of low-carbon investments that can attract billions of dollars of wealth into the country and put India on an environmentally sustainable growth trajectory. The World Investment Report 2010 estimates that worldwide low-carbon foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in 2009 in merely three sectors renewables, recycling and low-carbon technology manufacture alone amounted to $90billion (around R4.11 lakh crore). The potential for low carbon investment is enormous but is India ready to reap the benefits?

Though India’s current per capita CO2 emissions are 1.2 metric ton (MT) against a world average of 4 (the US is 19), this cannot be used as an excuse for complacency in investing in green projects. Global warming is a real threat, and by facilitating additional investments and transfer of technology, low carbon investment can reinforce India’s growth while controlling the carbon intensity of its development path. After all, India is both a large potential market for products borne out of low-carbon investments (like energy efficient household appliances) as well as an emerging player in the low-carbon industry developing photovoltaic cells, wind power, waste management, reforestation efforts etc. “We have the option to get locked into a high-carbon growth trajectory since we have abundant reserves of coal. We find ourselves at a critical juncture if we want to stay on a low-carbon growth trajectory,” says Shreekant Gupta, adjunct professor of Economics at the Lee-Kwan Yu School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Pull factors for low carbon investment, such as natural resources and potential markets, are not problems in India. What may be a hurdle is the lack of supporting policies from the government to ensure businesses make a more positive contribution.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) developed by the United Nations Forum for Combating Climate Change (UNFCCC) has allowed developed country investors to comply with emission norms by investing in climate mitigation projects in developing countries such as India and acquiring carbon-credits in return. As of now, India accounts for 22.5% of all registered CDM projects at the UNFCCC. However, the carbon-credit volumes transacted in India in 2008 were small only 4%, dwarfed by China’s 84%. It seems India is taking baby steps in this direction.

“In pure carbon investments, which are high-risk, like the Bachat Lamp Yojana (which promotes replacement of inefficient bulbs with energy-saving CFL bulbs), waste management etc.,” said Nitu Goel, vice president at Managing Emissions, a carbon-finance firm. “The appetite is low due to long gestation periods of carbon-credits. But in energy investments, which are profitable, we have seen a large number of projects.”

Progress is being made. “At a policy level, India has the National Action Plan on Climate Change. In the energy sector, policies have been formulated to encourage 3rd party sales, feed-in-tariffs, allowing 100% FDI and other benefits,” said Ashutosh Pandey, of Emergent Ventures India, a climate change consulting company.

In fact, nearly half of the 806 reported investments from 2003-09 in environmental technology products like windmills and solar panels were in developing countries including India, Brazil, China and Indonesia, according to the WIR.

“Indian firms have shown interest, but to go to the next step, they need to show more pizzazz,” said Gupta.

“Demand for cars is on the cusp of a great expansion. This will have a huge impact on our energy needs and carbon emissions,” he said. “A massive investment in hybrid cars could be the next big opportunity for Indian car manufacturers. Differential road tax to create a market for eco-friendly cars is one example of policy we don’t have.”

(Last week, the government announced an incentive package that gives up to R1 lakh to buyers of electric cars).

The developmental benefits that India can capture with a well-designed low carbon strategy include energy security, cleaner air in cities and better waste management. After all, Gupta said, “almost 300 million people in India don’t have access to electricity. For them, every hour is earth hour.”

BANGALORE, INDIA: Indian IT major Wipro topped the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) rankings published for India for the first time.

The CDLI rankings are part of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the gold standard globally for Climate Change disclosures, Wipro said in a press release. The India chapter of the CDP is stewarded by the CII-ITC Center for Sustainable Development and WWF India.

The CDLI recognizes organizations meeting outstanding standards of transparency and comprehensiveness of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting and analysis. Wipro topped the list with a score of 87 on 100.

On this occasion, Anurag Behar, chief sustainability officer, Wipro, said this is an indicator of the organization’s consistent efforts to set new standards of excellence in its sustainability program.

New Delhi, Nov 25 (IANS) With climate change talks at Cancun next week expected to get stuck on some contentious issues between developing and developed countries, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh Thursday said that India will act as a ‘bridge’ between the two sides.

‘India’s approach at Cancun is to find the middle ground on contentious issues between the developed and developing countries as the time of posturing is over but time to look for solution. India is positioning itself as a bridge player between developing and developed countries. We need to be practical and cannot remain frozen and should engage with all countries as part of our foreign policy,’ said Ramesh during a workshop on climate change here.

Against the background of failed promises made at Copenhagen by the US and other developed countries, India is going to Cancun handicapped with key bargain element completely missing, he said.

‘The bargain between BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) countries and US at Copenhagen was availability of fast track finance to the amount of $30 billion during 2010-2012 and in return, developing countries will internationalise their domestic mitigation measures,’ he said.

‘At the end of one year we have some $7 billion and the US contribution, which is the richest and historically the highest emitter, is only $ 1.8 billion. It is a laughable number,’ Ramesh said.

The minister said that there is no hope to get more funds following growing financial crisis in PIGS (Poland, Ireland, Greece and Spain).

Asked what can be expected at the climate change talks scheduled in Cancun from Nov 29-Dec 10, Ramesh said: ‘There is not much hope and no legally binding treaty is expected from Cancun.’

‘Realistic outcome at Cancun won’t be an agreement… not even a framework of agreement but a set of decision endorsed by 190 UN countries which will provide the road map for finalising a final agreement or set of agreements at climate change talks at Durban in 2011′.

The building blocks of Cancun will be issues related to forestry, finance, technology transfer, adaptation and MRV/ICA (measurement, reporting and verification/international consultations and analysis).

Ramesh said things on which a agreement is expected are establishment of a green fund, agreement on meeting adaptation needs, endorsement of Redd (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), on transparency issue of MRV/ICA.

‘India is looking forward to two issues – establishment of technology transfer mechanism in area of adaptation to climate change and MRV/ICA for internationalising domestic mitigation measure.’

He said the US proposal of 17 percent reduction of emission by 2020 with base year of 2005 is ‘homeopathic’ as actually the level will only be down 3 percent from 1990 level.

‘We should not be defensive and negotiate with open mind. We will take debate to a point and if it hurts our national interest we won’t agree to it,’ he said.

On the second commitment period for Kyoto Protocol, Ramesh said it is non-negotiable but US is saying it won’t accept until China takes some emission cuts and China says it won’t until Europe takes it ‘so we are revolving in a circle.

Kyoto Protocol is the only legal document which talks about emission cuts by developed countries. Its time frame ends by 2012.

A member of Parliament in India has released a report that seeks to assess the viability of low-carbon infrastructure projects.

Shri Suresh Prabhu, who is also chairman of the Council of Environment, Power and Water, launched The India Infrastructure Report 2010: Infrastructure Development in a Low Carbon Economy to evaluate the legal, financial and social issues surrounding environmentally beneficial infrastructure that will complement the sub-continents thriving economy.

“We as a large country like India need to create infrastructure that is futuristically clean and green and will not create environmental issues for coming generations,