| The World Bank has issued a Letter of Intent (LoI) for the purchase of 8,00,000 tonnes of carbon credits from the FaL-G brick and block industry at $5 per tonne of carbon dioxide. |
| The MoU was signed to this effect by Ken Newcombe, PCF fund manager and senior manager (carbon finance business), World Bank, and INSWAREB director Kalidasat Washington on June 3. |
| The trade in carbon credits is a result of a decision arrived at the environment summit in Kyoto where representatives from 160 countries had agreed to a promising approach: give carbon an economic value and let people, countries and companies trade in it. A similar system for limiting emissions of sulphur dioxide has been shown to work in the US. |
| Fal-G bricks and blocks do not need any thermal energy whereas traditional clay bricks consume over 200 tonnes of coal for per million bricks of output. FaL-G is well qualified as an emission-abating project to receive the benefits of carbon credits. |
| Fal-G bricks are produced using fly-ash and though the Fal-G brick weighs a little more than the conventional brick, the wall-to-wall weight is considerably reduced by the use of Fal-G bricks as the need for plastering of walls is brought down substantially. |
| INSWAREB has practically demonstrated that use of Fal-G bricks and cement can help in the utilisation and safe disposal of fly ash and reduction of the ill-effects to the environment. |
| The utilisation of fly ash in the developed countries is to the extent of 90 per cent, about 70 per cent in China but in India it is a mere 10 per cent. Nearly 10 per cent of the total fly ash generated in the country, as an industrial byproduct, is available in Andhra Pradesh. |
| INSWAREB will, as per the MoU, bundle over 300 licensed plants of FaL-G brick production and transfer the carbon credits to the World Bank over the next 10 years. |
| For this purpose, INSWAREB has drawn a monitoring and verification mechanism that would be invoked through strict audit procedures, he said. |
| The earnings of these credits would go to the micro units on a pro-rata basis to their annual output. To accomplish this task successfully, entrepreneurs would be facilitated with project loans and working capital, the repayment of which would be considerably taken care by the carbon credits. |
| Thus, the entrepreneurs virtually get the funds free if they perform well both in production and sales. INSWAREB has formed a commercial organisation, Eco-Carbon Private Ltd, which functions as the project sponsor to coordinate all these commercial activities of this bundling programme. |
| According to Kalidas, as envisaged by INSWAREB for its macro level programme, the outcome of this project would ensure that the national environmental agenda of conserving the topsoil on one hand and utilising fly ash on the other would be accomplished. INSWAREB's projections show 80 million tonnes of carbon credits in byproduct utilisation for building materials alone. |
| After extensive evaluation and an in-depth study, World Bank observed the FaL-G brick activity as the fittest and unique model for compliance to the multiple indicators of community development such as rehabilitating the artisans of clay brick industry with year-long livelihood, utilisation of industrial byproducts for ecological welfare, energy conservation etc, which all, in turn, serve the causes of global agenda, the sustainable development, he said. |
| At the invitation of the Punjab government, INSWAREB is engaged in drawing a state-level programme to enthuse local clay brick kiln owners in taking up fly ash brick activity. |
| Carbon credits would prove a great opportunity to all the states to tide over their resource crunch if they translate their industrial programmes into CDM projects to the available extent, he observed. |
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