Govt. to introduce market-based regulation for air pollution control

Union Minister for Environment & Forests Jairam Ramesh today said the Government would soon introduce an Energy Saving Certificate and Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) system, which will be a kind of energy trading, to encourage industries to achieve better energy efficiency standards.

Under the system, industrial units which are meeting the standards could sell them to those who are not, Mr Ramesh told mediapersons here.

He said this would be a step towards market-based regulation to control air pollution. He was speaking after releasing a paper on "Towards an Emissions Trading Scheme for Air Pollutants in India."

Mr Ramesh pointed out that one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan of Climate Change was the National Mission on Energy Efficiency.

He said the Energy Efficiency Bureau would be introducing the PAT System for more than 700 industrial units in energy-intensive sectors such as steel, aluminium, petrochemicals and so on.

He said another innovation planned was a market-based trading mechanism, the pilots of which would be introduced in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat because they were advanced states in online monitoring.

"The key requirement for a market based trading scheme will be on-line monitoring round the clock. The pilot project will be supported by the Ministry and the Ministry of Information Technology team will be associated with it. Once it is operationalised, it will be extended to rest of the country," he said.

Mr Ramesh said the Ministry was finalising a major World Bank project for institutional strengthening and reform of the Central Pollution Control Board and State Pollution Control Boards.

It will be a Rs 1300 crore project over the next five years and discussions are going on with the Ministry of Finance and the World Bank, he added.

NNN