Sustainability and Carbon Markets:A Meeting Ground

Sustainable development is the terminal goal of all world economies including India. Availability of clean and sustainable energy acts as a catalyst for economic growth. Coal continues to be the primary resource used for electricity generation due to its abundant and widespread availability. Coal being a fossil fuel and a non renewable source, has many and varied impacts on the environment. The environmental impacts of coal on the consumption front with special emphasis on emission of carbon dioxide and the corresponding technology related mitigation measures viz. global initiatives on developing clean coal technologies is examined in this paper. Despite these on-going efforts, burning of Coal continues to he a major contributor to greenhouse gases emissions which result in climate change and global ivarming. An innovative mechanism - the carbon markets involving both allowance based transactions and project based transactions is being implemented to check and cap carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore the paper also presents an overview of the carbon markets that have been developed as per the Kyoto Protocol which came into effect in 2005 to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted due to the dominant use of coal and petroleum products primarily by the energy sector.