ADB to provide funds for clean energy projects

BHUBANESWAR: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) organised a day long workshop on Carbon Financing opportunities in infrastructure projects.  Demystifying the concept called carbon trading was the main purpose of the carbon financing workshop. Most of the participants at the workshop were either involved in projects related to carbon trading or were interested to know more about it. ADB’s senior climate change specialist Jiwan Acharya elaborated the various aspects Carbon Market Programme (CMP) and how the interested parties could get the necessary funds required to start a clean energy project.  There were several questions regarding carbon credits, how one could sell them and how could a project be registered. One tonne CO2 emission reduced equals one carbon credit and it is this carbon credit that is traded in the global market. ADB mostly focuses on channelising the funds from the developed countries to the developing countries.   Even though ADB entered the Odisha market for the first time, they could find potential for CMP in the State. Most of the queries revolved around how could small companies register and if ADB would provide support to all. While ADB provides 30 percent of the fund, the rest is financed by a third party private company.  ADB will provide finance to the parties that are unable to gather funds needed to go through the procedures involved in registering the project for carbon trading. As registering projects for CMP can be very complicated and tiring, ADB hopes that with their intervention, things will be simplified to some extent, informed ADB technical adviser Vinay Deodhar.  “This is the first time we are doing something like this in the State after the State Government approached us,” informed Vidisha Samarasekra of ADB. Depending on the response and queries posed by the participants, future plans on how to take CMP in the State will be formulated.  Housing and Urban Development Department commissioner cum secretary Saurav Garg, PWD chief engineer Bijan Behera were also present at the workshop.