The third phase of Adani Power Ltd’s (APL) thermal power plant at Mundra in Gujarat has become the world’s first coal-fired plant to receive carbon credits from the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the company announced on Monday.

APL, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd and part of the Adani Group, has set up the 4,620 MW coal-fired thermal power plant at Mundra. Its Phase III, comprising two units of 660 MW each, has received carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of UNFCCC.

APL will earn about Rs 600 crore in carbon credits trading over the first 10 years of the plant’s operation. It is expected to generate about 1.8 million Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) annually.

APL’s other projects to be registered under CDM are the Mundra Phase IV (three units of 660 MW each), Tiroda Phase II and III in Maharashtra (three units of 660 MW in each phase), Kawai power plant in Rajasthan (entire 1,320 MW) and the 1,000-km-long Mundra-Mohindergarh High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission line linking Gujarat with Haryana.

Commenting on this achievement, Rajesh Adani, Managing Director, APL, said, “While the reduced combustion of fossil fuels will help conserve precious natural resources, the carbon credit issuance to our

project will also encourage other entities to implement similar projects to reduce their own carbon footprint. Additionally, we are confident of expanding our generation capacity to nearly 10,000 by March 2013.”

APL, India’s largest private thermal power producer, operates the world’s largest single-location thermal power plant of 4,620 MW capacity. In 2009, the Phase III of Mundra plant became the world’s first project registered under the ‘ACM0013’ methodology under CDM of the UNFCCC. This methodology is used to register thermal power projects which use technologically advanced equipment that burn a lesser quantity of fossil fuel.

The other APL projects registered under CDM are the two units of 660 MW each under Phase I at Tiroda plant in Maharashtra (with 11.9 million CERs/year) and a 40  solar power plant at Bitta, Gujarat (with 62,000 CERs/year).

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