FinSoul: India takes strong steps toward Renewable Energy Certificate market.

Jan. 19, 2010 - PRLog -- FinSoul has learned that India, the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas polluter has recently established regulations on renewable energy certificates (RECs), which are bought by businesses in order to meet statutory obligations to buy a minimum amount of renewable energy.

"This concept seeks to address the mismatch between availability of renewable energy sources and the requirement of the obligated entities to meet their renewable purchase obligation," a statement released by the Indian government said.

India’s renewable energy currently accounts for only 8% of the nations total capacity of around 150,000 MW but the government has indicated that it intends doubling renewable energy generation to 25,000 MW within the next four years.

The value of certificates would be equal to 1MW hour of electricity and a central agency would administer certificate trading between renewable power generators. Clean energy producers could either sell their power at a preferential rate set by the provincial power regulators or market the electricity generation and environmental attributes connected to the renewable power separately, FinSoul believes.

"It is also expected to encourage renewable energy capacity addition ... as the REC framework seeks to create a national level market for such generators to recover their cost," FinSoul believes the statement continued.

Carbon business analysts see the new regulations as a positive step to boosting investment in renewable energy projects.
"What it does is it gives government a tool to enforce its regulation. Those states which don't have enough natural resources to generate power could buy renewable certificates from others and meet their quota. It will also encourage states to invest in companies or renewable capacities in states where there are renewable resources," FinSoul understands a CSLA, a leading Asian independent brokerage, analyst as saying.

# # #

FinSoul structures and guides greenhouse gas emission reduction projects from beginning to end, working with both project developers and buyers of emission reduction credits.