Sep 23 2010
Emergent Ventures India is a division of the recently extended form of a U.N. program the Clean Development Mechanism that is designed to propagate the use of clean energy expertise in a larger way in third world countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The program is aimed at bringing the developing companies of smaller sized solar power projects together and assists them in earning U.N. carbon credits and increases their return on investments. The aim of the program is to provide such incentives to the small sized projects which otherwise would loose carbon credits due to costly CDM auditing fee and the extended process of approval.
EVI, said to be the first of its kind program in India has commenced contracting with the developers of 1 or 2 MW solar projects and hopes to achieve 50 MW soon. The signed project forms a part of the Indian government sponsored scheme to augment solar power generation to 20 GW by the year 2021. The first phase of the program meant for a total investment of 100 MW will include 1 MW or 2 MW solar power productions and each such installation will be offered with competitive electricity rates as an inducement. Each MW production can provide electricity to 1,000 homes and such ground mounted system will cost around $3 million.
According to Deepak Verma, Head and CEO of Carbon Finance and Technology Solutions of EVI, the program would require a minimum of 30 to 40 small sized solar projects to achieve no loss no gain position and each project can earn up to 1200 U.N. carbon credits or CER annually for every MW of power produced. He added that including 50 projects in a year will generate up to 75,000 CERs and can be traded in the European Climate exchange. He added that every CER was sold for €13.68 during last week. The CDM of the company allows the small investors to earn carbon credits for each of their projects.