The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has earned Rs 19.5 crore in six years from the sale of 3.5 million carbon credits.
These credits are tradable certificates, which enables DMRC to sell credits earned from its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission-reducing projects to other organisations, who need to compensate for their GHG emissions.
Anuj Dayal, executive director (corporate communications), DMRC, said that Delhi Metro became the first Metro or railway project in the world to be registered by the United Nations under the clean development mechanism (CDM) in 2007, which enabled DMRC to claim carbon credits for its regenerative braking project.
“CDM is a project-based GHG offset mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol allowing the public and private sector in high-income nations the opportunity to purchase carbon credits from GHG emissions-reducing projects in low or middle-income nations as part of their efforts to meet international emissions targets under the protocol,” Dayal said.
The 3.5 million carbon credits were collected over a period of six years from 2012 to 2018.
“DMRC has been a pioneer in India in quantifying climate change benefits from its operations. It has a number of dedicated projects to its credit oriented towards energy efficiency,” he said.
Dayal said that CDM projects generate emissions credits called certified emission reductions, which are then bought and traded.
