Under the Mission, some of the country’s most energy intensive industrial units will be able to cap and trade in energy savings certificates accrued from energy efficiency improvements.
This is the ‘Perform, Achieve and Trade’ (PAT) mechanism which would assign energy efficiency improvement targets to the industrial units, with the provision of allowing them to retain any energy-efficiency improvements in excess of their target in the form of Energy Savings Certificates, called ESCerts. Units will also be allowed to use purchased ESCerts to meet their targets.
According to an official release, the Mission will enable about Rs 75,000 crore worth of transactions in energy efficiency. In doing so, it will, by 2015, help save about five per cent of the annual energy consumption, and nearly 100 million tonne of carbon dioxide every year. India’s emissions now stand at around 1.5 b tones annually. The Prime Minister expects the Mission to act as a powerful signal to the international community on India’s willingness to meet the climate change challenge.
The Mission is the second of the eight under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change to be approved by the Council. The Solar Mission was earlier approved.
Other Mission initiatives include expanded use of the carbon market to help achieve market transformation towards more energy-efficient equipment and appliances, and the creation of two funds to help channel investment into energy-efficiency projects.
One of the funds, the Partial Risk Guaranty Facility, will provide back-to-back guarantees to banks for loans to energy-efficiency projects to reduce the perceived risks of these projects.
The other fund, a Venture Capital Fund, would support investment in the manufacturing of energy-efficient products and provision of energy-efficiency services.
A good initiative but as the PM mentioned, strict monitoring and implementation must be ensured. Else it stands in danger of becoming mere rhetoric in the face of growing international pressure to limit emissions.
PS: Yet another 'big news' is IPCC's Pachauri's comments on emission limit. He told AFP that, 'As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations, but as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target.'
Now consider that the CO2 emissions are now at 390 ppm and most nations are making plans to limit them to 450 ppm! Is what Pachauri says, and which is indeed necessary, practical??
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