Delhi Metro - World's first metro to get UN certification

New Delhi, Sept 26: The United Nation has certified the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) as the first metro rail and rail-based system in the world to have “carbon credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions", which helps in decreasing pollution levels in the capital by 6.3 lakh tonne every year. The Delhi Metro has earned carbon credits worth about Rs.47 crore annually for the next seven years.

A Delhi Metro official said that at present, about 18 lakh people are travelling by metro, which is non-polluting and environmental friendly. These people have been travelling in trains only because of metro or else they would have used other means to commute resulting in the emission of green house gases.

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 has helped in the reduction of around 91,000 vehicles from the city roads, where the number of vehicles were much higher than in other cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi in the past two decades.

OneIndia News