First consumer efficiency projects in India to be translated into carbon credits

The CDM pipeline analysis from the UNEP RISOE yesterday outlined some interesting submissions from India. A set of 11 Small Scale CDM Projects under a “CFL Lighting Scheme” have clearerd the National body and submitted to the CDM board this month. These are currently under a comment period.

CFL cost = regular bulb cost. Under the project they’re proposing to distribute Compact Flourescent Lamps (CFLs) at the cost of incandescent bulbs in a few rural regions. It will be interesting to track this project, not just as it generates CERs (assuming clearance) but also to see how users respond to CFLs: and if at all a ‘black market’ in CFLs emerges.  After all the project does involve subsidizing the cost of CFLs heavily and the CERs generated are proportional to the number of CFLs distributed. Distrbution may be easier than validation.

The PDD consultant is Banyan Enviornmental Innovations (BEI) and they have partnered with Southco (in Orissa) to distribute CFLs. BEI has also partnered wih Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited’s holding company, Madhyanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Limited (MVVNL).

These projects are under methodology: AMS-II.J i.e. Demand-side activities for efficient lighting technologies (deemed savings). This is for the first time that these methodologies are being used. You can see one of the 11 PDDs here.

The transmission losses stated in the document seem high (stated at 65%) and it is to be seen what feedback emerges during the commenting period. Tracking such a project will be an interesting challenge.

DNV is the validator for the project. As per the PDD: “Two monitoring technologies are being considered for the Project, an automated reporting system with a frequency of monitoring  of 15 seconds (this will record the usage of CFL where it is installed as soon as it is switched till the time it is switched off again). The device will record the cumulative hours of usage and this cumulative usage value of usage over monitoring period would be used to derive the value of daily usage for the CFL device. The average daily usage of CFL (measured during the monitoring interval) for all the CFL in the project sample group would provide the ok value to be used for calculation of baseline, project emissions and emission reductions”. A sample group of 100 households is planned for each project to track the impact of the CFLs.

We hope to track these projects to see how they fare. It is a good initiative to begin to get energy-efficient devices to the users. How will they impact consumer behavior especially in rural regions and the utilities Southco and MVNL remains to be seen.

List of the 11 projects submitted as well as their anticipated CO2 reduction: