India, China scuttle move to review clean power projects

India and China successfully blocked a proposal to suspend a United Nations programme to earn carbon credits from ultra mega power projects. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 18, 2011, 19:04:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India and China successfully blocked a proposal to suspend a United Nations programme to earn carbon credits from ultra mega power projects.

India and China are the majority stakeholders in the programme. Of the 37 projects under consideration, 26 are from India and 11 from China. Of the three projects already registered, one is from India and two from China.

If the all projects are registered, the two emerging economies will earn more than 40 lakh carbon credits per year.

One credit is equal to a tonne of carbon emission saved and is sold for about $15.

A UN panel had recommended taking the ultra mega thermal power plants off the list of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects for earning carbon credits on the ground that claim of emission reduction was exaggerated by 25 to 50%.

The proposal considered by CDM executive board -- highest carbon credit decision making body -- refused to accept the recommendation following stiff resistance from China and India.

"Our concern was the methodology adopted by meth panel in making the recommendation was not correct," said a government official.

"Many of the emission reductions claimed are on the basis of actual monitoring and now just assumptions."

China was more vehement in opposing the recommendation than India as its 11 projects under evaluation would be earning much more credits than 26 projects from India. Both India and China believed that any move to suspend the projects will adversely hit clean energy adoption in the two countries.

The CBM board members agreed to the concerns raised by India and China and refused to suspend the projects under evaluation. However, the board decided to review the methodology for estimating carbon credits from these projects at the next meeting.

But, European NGOs, which have been running a campaign to discredit the methodology for thermal powers plants, said the decision will harm the credibility of CDM.

"Knowing that there is a chance that a revised methodology could slash the number of credits creates an incentive to accelerate validation so that flawed rules can still be used to generate lucrative credits," said Anja Kollmuss from Europe based NGO CDM Watch.

The reprieve will help India to pursue its cleaner super critical coal technology to harness its energy needs under Ultra Mega Power Plants scheme and earn millions of US dollars under the CDM regime.

This had become amply clear when former environment minister Jairam Ramesh had justified the approval of new coal blocks saying they will help in running lesser polluting power plants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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