"India is the UK's largest trading partner in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) market," Mr Elliot Morley, British Minister of State for Climate Change and Environment, said, addressing a seminar on `Mainstreaming CDM Opportunities in the Indian Finance Sector: Issues, Risk and Barriers' organised by IT Power here on Friday.

He said India was a big player in the CDM market with 25 per cent of projects registered from here (23 out of 93).

Projects in pipeline

According to industry estimates, over 200 out of the 600 projects in the pipeline are based here.

"In terms of volume, this represents over 20 million tonnes of CO2e per annum of 17 per cent of the current market supply," he noted.

Stating that an efficient and credible Kyoto projects market was "important to all of us", he said such a market would reduce costs of compliance with Kyoto targets via purchase of offsets, and secure the benefits of investment in projects on the ground.

The EU was at the forefront of increasing private investment in CDM — with the UK at its core.

Already some $1 billion in private carbon funds had been established in London alone. However, both India and the UK were taking the lead in terms of CDM projects in the pipeline, he said.

Stressing that much more needed to be done, he said, "This year we will need to monitor progress on implementation of what we agreed, and there will be much further discussion on a broad range of important issues and policy questions."