🌍 India’s Carbon Market: Why We Must Rethink Our Targeting Strategy

As the world intensifies its efforts against climate change, India has taken significant steps by launching a Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS)—designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions across sectors like steel, cement, textiles, and petrochemicals.

At its core lies a simple idea:

Pollute less, earn more. Pollute more, pay more.

This is operationalized through the Perform, Achieve, and Trade (PAT) mechanism, which rewards industries that cut emissions below target and allows trading of energy-saving certificates.

But here’s the critical debate:

➡️ Should India set entity-specific targets for each company?

➡️ Or should we pivot to a broader economy-wide approach?

🔍 Evidence shows that while some sectors struggle, others outperform—and when looked at collectively, overall emission intensity does decline. The first PAT cycle (2012–2014) proved this point. This makes a strong case for focusing on aggregate efficiency over micro-targeting, especially when high compliance costs can cripple already fragile industries.

📉 With India aiming to cut GHG intensity by 45% by 2030 under its Panchamrit climate commitments, a shift in approach is more than strategic—it’s necessary.

💡 Climate ambition must be matched with economic realism. Sectoral cooperation, carbon credit markets, and policy agility will define our success in the decade ahead.

—

#ClimateAction #CarbonMarket #GHGEmissions #PATScheme #Sustainability #CarbonCredit #IndiaNetZero #Decarbonization #EnvironmentalPolicy #CleanEconomy #EnergyTransition #Panchamrit #COP26 #KyotoProtocol #GreenIndia