The GEP-CCS project is mainly being carried out by Climate Change Centre, Development Alternatives. The other partners are Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), mainly for co-ordinating climate change research in Indian Institutions and for collaborating with U.S. research organisations like World Resources Institute (WRI). The project is being co-ordinated by the Louis Berger Group Inc. (LBG), a consulting company from Washington D.C. and with its project office in New Delhi.

The funding agencies present in the workshop were the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Infrastructure Development and Finance Company (IDFC) etc. The Climate Change Centre, Development Alternatives has three major functions - research, outreach and facilitation. The workshop was one of the outreach and facilitation activities that Climate Change Centre, Development Alternatives undertakes.

The workshop started with the welcome note by Kalipada Chatterjee, Development Alternatives, welcoming the distinguished participants and giving them a brief introduction of the workshop. In his keynote presentation, Kalipada Chatterjee explained how the human activities such as energy generation, industrial production, transportation, and land use change are contributing to the increasing concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere which in turn results in global warming. He discussed the emissions projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). At the present rate of emissions of GHGs, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ will reach something between 550 to 1000 ppmv by the year 2100 from the current level of 365 ppmv. Kalipada also discussed the UNFCCC provisions and the perspectives of the developing countries regarding the issue of climate change and its mitigation. Kalipada talked about the current and projected GHG emissions from India and concluded that there was scope for increasing the efficiency of various sectors of the economy without compromising with the economic growth, thus raising India’s GDP without much increase in the GHG emissions.

Ron Sissem, The Louis Berger Group Inc., gave a detailed introduction to the GEP-CCS project and its aims and objectives. Mr. Sandeep Tandon, USAID, gave a brief introduction of the USAID programmes aimed at energy conservation and environmental protection. Representatives of a few funding agencies namely Dr. Venkata Raman, United Nations Development Programme, New Delhi and Mr. Ajay Narayanan, Infrastructure Development and Finance Company were also present in the workshop.

John Paul Moscarella, Econergy International Corporation, discussed in detail the GHG investment options and carbon markets. John gave an account of various national and regional programmes throughout the world aimed at GHG emission reductions. He discussed the emerging international market of carbon – its size and scope, its demand signal and pricing trends etc. John elaborated the various options available for clean energy and development of climate change mitigation projects in those sectors. At last he discussed the Carbon Finance Model – what the carbon revenue stream was, what were the possible options for carbon transaction and models for purchasing and performance contracts.

After discussing the general scenario of carbon market, John explained the project development process – identification of a baseline, protocol for monitoring and verification, additionality, project risks and their mitigation. He also discussed about the risks involved in this kind of projects, at what stage in the cycle of project development do these risks appear and how to mitigate these risks through various contractual documents etc.

Ajay Narayanan, Infrastructure Development and Finance Company (IDFC), presented IDFC initiatives in the decentralised energy field in India. He discussed a few case studies from the solar home devices/pumps, waste to energy projects, biomass projects and other areas of interest to IDFC such as bio-diesels and vegetable oils for power generation and urban transport, hybrid electric vehicle technologies etc. He mentioned that future plans of IDFC was to stimulate the mainstreaming and commercialization of Decentralised Infrastructure, leverage soft money to participate in financing of IREDA/MNES and bilaterals, multilaterals and carbon money/GEF, create structures that ensure performance of projects and create capacity amongst intermediaries to be able to do these subsequently.

P. Venkata Ramana, United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP), presented the perspectives of Global Environment Facility (GEF), the financial mechanism for international Cooperation. GEF has provision of grant and concessional funding for focal areas like climate change, biological diversity, international waters, ozone layer depletion etc. Dr. Venkat discussed the operational and programming framework of the GEF. According to him total UNDP-GEF portfolio for India was US $ 40 million and 65% of that was for climate change and 17% was for bio-diversity programmes.

Project Development

Project developers from the renewable energy sector presented their project proposals for perusal of the funding agencies. Following is a list of the projects that were developed during the workshop and are at various stages of finalisation.

Portfolio of Climate Change Mitigation Projects developed during the Bangalore workshop