Small-scale Renewable Energy project developers do not have in-house resources for specialized services for Project Design Documentation (PDD), in particular for baseline development. “Generic baselines for Renewable Energy projects” would reduce the transaction cost, while maintaining accuracy.

Baseline estimations have implications on the accuracy of projected Carbon Emission Reduction (CER) generation, and on the development and implementation of the monitoring protocol.

The proposed project will establish ready-to-use standardised baselines for PDD and monitoring procedures for grid-connected RE projects, which will be available to all through a dedicated project website and manuals. Projections will be made for the next ten years, which can be easily modified by developers based on availability of data. Approval from the Executive Board of UNFCCC will be obtained for the methodology used for designing the baselines. This is the first attempt of its kind to support small-scale Renewable Energy CDM projects. The main stakeholders targeted in the project are small-scale Renewable Energy Project Developers and Carbon Investors. Most of the states in India have necessary published information required for the proposed project except the North-Eastern (NE) states (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim) and Jammu & Kashmir. For NE states, information is available at the regional grid level.

Expected Impact

The project objective is to increase the economic viability and scope for small-scale grid connected Renewable Energy projects under the CDM through reduction in transaction costs. The most expected impacts are:

• Increased attractiveness of small-scale Renewable Energy projects under the CDM due to lower transaction costs.
• Increased incentives for small-scale Renewable Energy project developers.
• Increased participation of small-scale Renewable Energy projects in CDM.
• Improved understanding of carbon investments by carbon investors

Expected Output:

Some of the expected outputs of the project are:

• Baseline data and baseline for each Indian state/region based on modalities and procedures for small-scale CDM projects for grid connected Renewable Energy projects.
• Easy access to baseline data, information and findings of proposed projects for CDM project developers and investors through dedicated project website and published reports.

Ready-to-use baselines for small-scale grid connected Renewable Energy CDM projects in India, which have been approved by the Executive Board.