The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has been certified by the United Nations as the first metro rail and rail-based system in the world to get “carbon credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions” and helping in reducing pollution levels in the city by 6.3 lakh tonne every year. With this certification, the Delhi Metro has earned carbon credits worth about Rs.47 crore annually for the next seven years and with the increase in number of passengers, this figure will only increase.
About 18 lakh people travel by the metro rail which is completely non-polluting and environment-friendly. But for the metro, these people would have travelled by cars, buses, two or three-wheelers which would have resulted in emission of greenhouse gases.
Thus, the DMRC has helped in reduction in emission of harmful gases into the atmosphere and the United Nations-body administering the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol has certified that DMRC has reduced emissions.
According to the DMRC, no other metro in the world could get the carbon credit because of stringent requirement of the United Nations-body to provide conclusive documentary proof of reduction in emissions. It is difficult to give documentary proof of the difference of energy consumption of two scenarios -- “with metro and without metro”.
The Delhi Metro proposed an innovative method of proving the emissions using sampling techniques. After rigorous persuasion, the UN-body has finally agreed with this technique as it is scientific in nature.
The Delhi Metro has helped in “removing over 91,000 vehicles from the roads in the city daily”. During the past two decades, the city has had an exponential growth in the vehicular population having more vehicles than the combined number in the other three metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. More than 90 per cent of vehicles circulating are personal. In the absence of the project, passengers move from their trip origination to their destination by buses, taxis, cars, motorised rickshaws and by non-motorised transport. In the business-as-usual scenario, the modes of transport would continue to operate and transport passengers from their trip origin to their trip destination.
With the construction and operation of the Delhi Metro, the metro complements other modes of transport and replaces partially trips made by conventional or traditional means of transit.
The CDM project replaces trips made by conventional transport modes with metro, being a more efficient, faster, safer and more reliable transport means.
Emission reductions are achieved through reducing GHG emissions per passenger-kilometre, comparing conventional modes of transport with metro.
The resource efficiency of transporting passengers in Delhi by metro has improved emissions per passenger kilometre are reduced compared to the situation had the Delhi Metro not operated.
