India ODA project to aid Japan's Kyoto obligations

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Jan 11, 2008

The amount of carbon dioxide emissions calculated to be cut through the application of Japanese technology in a subway system built in India with official development assistance from Japan is to be counted as a reduction in Japanese greenhouse gas emissions under a U.N. system.
The clean development mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol in which companies in industrialized countries can obtain emission credits by financing emission-reducing projects in developing countries.
An application by the governments of Japan and India to have an annual reduction in emissions of about 40,000 tons in this project covered by the CDM was approved last month by the United Nations' CDM executive board.
This is the first time a railway project anywhere in the world has been approved in the CDM, and only the second time Japanese ODA has been approved under the mechanism, the first time being for a wind-power plant project in Egypt last year.
The idea of having ODA projects recognized under the CDM is contentious, but it seems likely a wide range of these projects will gain such approval in the future.
The Delhi Metro runs through India's capital, New Delhi, and its suburbs. Construction began in 1997, and Phase 1--three lines of track covering 59 kilometers--went fully into operation in 2006. About 163 billion yen of the about 278 billion yen project cost was financed by yen loans.
When the brakes of a train on the ODA-funded subway system are applied, the electricity produced from the rotation of motors is extracted and reused elsewhere on the train, reducing CO2 emissions and cutting energy consumption by about one-third.
This technology is used on trains in Japan, but has not been used in India before.
India can sell this reduction in CO2 emissions to industrialized nations under the CDM, and it has signed a deal with Japan Carbon Finance, Ltd., a private firm that is financed by 33 companies including Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Nippon Oil Corp., to sell credits for 200,000 tons, or five years' worth of emission credits.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is obliged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 6 percent between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2012 from fiscal 1990 levels.
The emission credits gained from the subway system in India are believed to be earmarked to help meet targets set in voluntary action plans to reduce CO2 emissions by each industry in the industrial sector.
(Jan. 11, 2008)