PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has developed a plan to market through the World Bank its carbon credits on account of generating clean hydel and solar power without polluting the environment.

Carbon credit, a permit which allows a country or organisation to produce a certain amount of carbon emissions, can be traded globally with other companies with larger carbon footprint.

In this connection, the energy and power department has moved a note to the KP chief secretary’s office, requesting him to authorise it for approaching the World Bank for provision of technical assistance and facilities for certification and marketing of the province’s carbon credits to enable the department to claim its due share by marketing these assets owned by the provincial government in a better way.

The KP government through Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organisation (Pedo), has a legitimate claim of its share in the market as Pedo has been generating clean energy for the last almost three decades, reads the note prepared for claiming the carbon credit.

At present, Pedo has been generating 161.8MW hydel power through hydropower projects (HPP) for the national grid, 28,884KW through community-owned micro hydel power stations and 16,054.67KW through various solar projects on daily basis.

Environment-friendly hydropower projects can generate $60m annually for the province

The energy department has already shared the data of power generation with climate change and environment department to calculate tonnes (t) of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent (e) or tCO2e.

“In this regard Pakistan Environment Trust (PET), an Islamabad-based not-for-profit organisation, has approached Pedo through the KP government to market its carbon credits. PET has estimated that these projects can fetch US$60 million annually for KP,” reads the note.

It further states that from the discussion with PET, it is presumed that they are going for the offset market only.

The World Bank is overall supervising this operation globally under the Paris Agreement.The Climate Warehouse is a global public metadata layer empowering a new global carbon market infrastructure through a decentralised information technology platform built on blockchain technology, under the umbrella of the World Bank.

It aims to mobilise climate action toward the Paris Agreement objectives by enhancing transparency and environmental integrity of carbon credit transactions and international carbon markets.

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997, which entered into force in 2005. Currently, there were 192 parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which operationalises the United Nations Framework Convention (UNFC) on climate change by committing industrialised countries and economies in transition to limit and reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in accordance with agreed individual targets.

The UNFC itself only asks those countries to adopt policies and measures on mitigation and to report periodically. It binds developed countries and places a heavier burden on them under the principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities because it recognises that they are largely responsible for the current high level of greenhouse gases.

A senior official of the energy and power department told Dawn that the note for claiming carbon credit has been forwarded to the chief secretary three days ago.

“We will start processing our case through World Bank after chief secretary’s approval,” the official said. He said the energy and power department has completed all the groundwork for claiming the carbon credit.

“We have summoned an internal meeting of all stakeholders including Pedo on Monday in this regard,” he said, adding the energy department has also directed Pedo to calculate the data of power so far generated in KP through hydel and solar projects.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2023