Delhi Metro wins prestigious award

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has won an award for Best Clean Development Project at Urban Mobility Conference, 2011, held in New Delhi.The award was given by the Indian Minister of Urban Development, Kamal Nath during the Conference to Mangu Singh, DMRC’s Director (Works).Delhi Metro has become the first metro-rail and rail based system in the world to be certified by the United Nations (UN), which will get carbon credits for reducing Green House Gas Emissions as it has helped to reduce pollution levels in the city by 6.3 lakh tonnes every year.Around 1.8 million people travel on the Metro every day, which is ‘completely non-polluting and environmentally friendly’.In the absence of the Metro, all these commuters would have travelled by cars, buses, two/three wheelers etc which would have resulted in the emission of green house gases.Every passenger who chooses to use the Metro instead of car/bus contributes in reduction in emissions to the extent of approx. 100 gm of carbon dioxide for every trip of 10 km.No other metro in the world ‘could get the Carbon Credit because of the very stringent requirements’ of the United Nations Body to provide conclusive documentary proof of reduction in emissions, but DMRC’s innovative method of emissions cut using sampling techniques was finally accepted by the UN body, which is very scientific in nature.Delhi Metro has helped remove more than 91,000 vehicles from the roads of Delhi daily.During the last two decades Delhi had an exponential growth in the vehicular population having more vehicles than the combined number in the other three metro cities of Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.This is the second CDM project from DMRC to be registered with the UN body in the last three years.DMRC’s first CDM project on regenerative braking had also achieved many international firsts apart from earning valuable foreign exchange for the country.The conference was held recently in the New Delhi and was organised by the Ministry of Urban Development.