Today is Friday, January 26, 2024.
While COP-28 in Dubai did not deliberate about Article 6 nor Carbon Credits, Brazil and India struggle to regulate their domestic Carbon Markets.
Today we go over the status in India, after a post about Brasil last Wednesday.
The framework for the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), for the Indian Carbon Market (ICM) was annouced last June 28, 2023, as we previously reported.
After that, early in November 2023, the carbon credits administrator, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) released a draft outlining the requirements for companies to adhere to the domestic carbon market, in alignment with the National Determined Contributions (NDCs). The name of the document was "Detailed Procedure for Compliance Mechanism under CCTS" and it came out together with another draft, "Accreditation Eligibility Criteria and Procedure for Accredited Carbon Verification Agency".
The reaction of India's Ministry of Power came in a form of an official notice addressed to BEE. It was released on December 19, a few days after COP-28 in Dubai finished without deliberating on the topic, as already indicated.
One key turnaround of the government was the reversal from their previous stance against a voluntary scheme, as only the compliance sector was initially planned to become functional by 2026.
From that official notice, here some interesting amendments to the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme 2023, "herein after referred to as the Principal Scheme":
BEE is tasked with both “validation” and “verification” of carbon credits, as opposed to only “verification” in the original scheme. This is something significant.
As such, BEE to develop standards and register projects under the offset mechanism.
This means that once BEE establishes standards, Indian entities will no longer have to rely on overseas standards agencies for validating their carbon credits. This move will reduce costs and time associated with overseas certification, making it more convenient for Indian carbon credit generators.
‘Non-obligated entities’ allowed to register decarbonization projects, generate carbon credits and seek the issuance of Carbon Credit Certificates.
Unlike obligated entities, ‘non-obligated entities do not have a prescribed limit for their greenhouse gas emissions.
Interesting move.
Also important to recall that independent of the carbon credit under the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme ... oops, its now "Principal Scheme", India created the so-called Green Credit Programme. Also as anticipated it in our post mentioned above, this Green Credit Initiative was launched on the side-lines of COP-28. According to a recent year-end review by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change "these rules put in place a mechanism to encourage voluntary environmental positive actions resulting in issuance of green credits. In its initial phase, voluntary tree plantation is envisaged on degraded land, waste land, watershed area etc. under the control and management of Forest departments".
Interesting idea.
Click here for the notification by India's Ministry of Power from last December 19, 2023 mentioned above. (There is an English version scrolling down the document, that starts in Hindi).
