News: Recently, the Environment Ministry notified India’s first legally binding Greenhouse Gas Emission Intensity (GEI) Target Rules, 2025.
About Greenhouse Gas Emission Intensity (GEI) Target Rules, 2025
- The Rules set targets for how much greenhouse gas can be emitted to make one unit of product, measured in tonnes of CO₂-equivalent (tCO₂e) per unit of output.
- Enforced by
- Notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
- The Bureau of Energy Efficiency issues the carbon credit certificates and determines the average trading price used for compliance calculations.
- The Central Pollution Control Board imposes the environmental compensation on non-compliant facilities and is responsible for recovering these.
- Objective: To promote the adoption of sustainable, cutting-edge technologies across traditionally high-emission industries, for addressing climate change.
- Linked with:
- Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS): GEI Rules are directly linked to the CCTS 2023, because they create the emission-intensity targets that will generate tradable carbon credits in India’s domestic carbon market.
- Paris Climate Agreement, 2015: It is also align with the Paris Climate Agreement, 2015, by supporting India’s nationally determined targets to reduce the emission intensity of GDP by 45% by 2030 from 2005 levels and to achieve net zero by 2070.
- Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme : The Rules build on the PAT scheme (energy efficiency without direct carbon limits)
- Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM): In addition, they help Indian exporters prepare for mechanisms like the European Union’s CBAM, which affects carbon-intensive exports such as cement, steel, and aluminium.
- Key feature
- First legally binding emission intensity targets for four high-emission sectors (aluminium, cement, chlor-alkali, and pulp and paper).
- It cover 282 units for 2025–26 and 2026–27.
- Sectoral reduction ranges over two years:
- 3.4% (cement)
- 5.8% (aluminium)
- 7.5% (chlor-alkali)
- 7.1% (pulp and paper).
- Each facility is assigned a GEI target using a 2023–24 baseline, and the target is measured as tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e) per unit of product.
- If a facility performs better than its target, it earns tradable carbon credit certificates.
- If it fails to meet the target, it must purchase equivalent carbon credits or pay environmental compensation set at twice the average trading pricefor that year.
- Any environmental compensation that becomes due must be paid within 90 days.
