India and Japan have formally adopted the implementation rules for their joint certification mechanism, taking the bilateral climate partnership from framework to operational, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change said on Tuesday.
Under the JCM, a Japanese company may finance a project in India to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions; These reductions are independently verified and converted into carbon credits, which can then be transferred between the two countries and count toward their respective climate pledges.
The rules were adopted on June 8 under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement — a provision that allows countries to trade emissions reductions bilaterally to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions, which are the individual climate targets each country has set under the agreement.
India and Japan signed a JCM Memorandum of Cooperation in August last year, to establish a framework for cooperation on mitigation activities that lead to reduction or elimination of emissions while supporting India’s sustainable development.
According to an official statement, the implementation rule sets out the governance arrangements for the mechanism, including a joint committee with representatives from the two governments, transparent procedures for project approval, third-party verification and verification of emission reductions, sustainable development guarantees, and national registries to track the issuance and transfer of credits.
The mechanism will attract investment, bring low-carbon technologies to India, build technical capacity, and support emission reduction projects, the statement said.
“The joint certification mechanism demonstrates India’s firm commitment to climate action. It will stimulate investment, technology transfer and capacity building for projects involving low carbon technologies in India to support climate change mitigation and sustainable development,” the ministry said.
The Delhi Metro, a product of the India-Japan partnership, will be eligible to transfer carbon credits under the joint certification mechanism.
A separate analysis released on Tuesday by Zero Carbon Analytics (ZCA), an international think tank on climate change and energy transition, raised concerns about Asia’s growing reliance on liquefied natural gas (LNG), warning that it could lead to deepening reliance on fossil fuels, exposing economies to global price shocks, and increasing emissions linked to worsening climate impacts across the region.
The analysis examined Japan’s role as one of the world’s largest LNG traders, finding that US LNG that Japan resold to nine Asian countries – South Korea, China, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Malaysia – between 2020 and 2025 generated emissions equivalent to those of about 17 coal-fired power plants operating for a year.
Since 2021, Japan has sold more US LNG to other countries than it has imported for domestic use; About 31% of the US LNG that it purchased and resold during that period was shipped to Asian markets.
The estimated 16.5 billion kg of US-produced LNG that Japan resells produced about 63.5 billion kg of carbon dioxide emissions across the entire fuel supply chain, ZCA said.
