Which CCTS document should you read first?
Start with the detailed procedure for whichever mechanism applies to you, not with the scheme notification. The Carbon Credit Trading Scheme notification is a short instrument that establishes the market and names who administers it; it does not tell a project what to do. The operational answers live in the Detailed Procedure for Compliance Mechanism or the Detailed Procedure for Offset Mechanism.
After the procedure, the order that works is the applicable methodology, then the tools that methodology invokes, then the notification and rules for the legal framing. Reading the gazette notifications first is the usual mistake: they are the authority for the scheme's existence, but a project's obligations are almost entirely downstream of them.
How is the CCTS document stack organised?
There are five layers, and knowing which one you are in saves a great deal of confusion. The Acts provide the legal power. The gazette notifications create the scheme and define its terms. The statutory rules set binding targets on named entities. The detailed procedures set out the operational steps. The methodologies and tools do the quantification.
- Acts — the Energy Conservation Act, 2001 and its 2022 amendment, which created the power to specify a carbon credit trading scheme.
- Notifications — S.O. 2825(E) establishing CCTS, and S.O. 5369(E) adding the offset mechanism.
- Rules — the Greenhouse Gases Emission Intensity Target Rules, which place binding targets on obligated entities.
- Procedures — the detailed procedures for the compliance and offset mechanisms, and the ACVA accreditation procedure.
- Methodologies and tools — the sector-specific quantification documents an offset project calculates with.
One consequence worth noting: the compliance mechanism and the offset mechanism are governed by almost entirely separate document sets below the notification layer. An obligated entity and an offset project developer read different rulebooks, use different templates and are verified against different criteria, even though both end up holding the same Carbon Credit Certificates.
Which documents matter for a forestry or agriculture project?
An offset project in the land sector works from a compact stack. The Detailed Procedure for Offset Mechanism sets the process from listing through issuance. One of the two forestry methodologies handles quantification — BM FR05.001 for degraded mangrove habitats, BM FR05.002 for afforestation and reforestation on lands except wetlands. The BM-T-AR series of tools then handles the component calculations.
- BM FR05.002 — afforestation and reforestation of lands except wetlands, published 8 September 2025, the methodology most agroforestry and plantation projects will use.
- BM FR05.001 — afforestation and reforestation of degraded mangrove habitats, published 27 March 2025, the blue carbon route.
- BM AG04.002 — emission reduction through improved management practices in rice cultivation, published 30 June 2026.
- BM-T-AR-0004 — estimation of carbon stocks and change in carbon stocks of trees and shrubs, the tool that does the biomass accounting.
- BM-T-AR-0006 — change in soil organic carbon stocks, which matters wherever the project claims a soil pool.
The tools are not optional reading. A methodology such as BM FR05.002 is comparatively short precisely because it delegates the arithmetic to the BM-T-AR tools, so a project team that has read only the methodology has not yet seen how its own numbers will be produced. See also the offset mechanism explained.
What is still in draft?
Several methodologies are published for consultation rather than for use, and the distinction is load-bearing. A draft methodology carries an unassigned methodology number or a placeholder publication date, and it sits on the Bureau's site alongside approved ones. Using a draft as though it were approved would invalidate a project design.
The drafts currently out for comment cover shore-side electricity supply, recovery and recycling from end-of-life vehicles, mass rapid transit, accelerated carbon mineralization and cooking energy. The status column in the table below marks each of these, and the Bureau publishes a comment template alongside them. A further draft amendment to the GEI Target Rules is also open.
How does CCTS compare with the voluntary standards?
Structurally, CCTS resembles Verra and Gold Standard more than it differs from them: a scheme-level rulebook, sector methodologies, methodological tools, and mandatory independent verification — here by an Accredited Carbon Verification Agency rather than a VVB. The substantive difference is that CCTS is statutory. Its targets are set by rules made under an Act of Parliament and its compliance obligations bind named entities, which is not true of any voluntary standard.
For the equivalents elsewhere, see the VCS document library, the Gold Standard document library, and CCTS compared with the voluntary carbon markets.
How current are these versions?
Every entry below shows the version and publication date stated on the document itself at the date this page was last reviewed. The methodologies and tools carry an explicit publication date on their first page, and those dates are taken from the documents rather than inferred from a listing.
Indian carbon market documents are reissued frequently — the GEI Target Rules were amended within three months of being made — so treat a version here as a pointer rather than a guarantee. Every link is re-checked against the publisher's site on a schedule, and the Indian Carbon Market portal remains the authority. None of the documents' text is reproduced: the descriptions are ours, and the authoritative wording is the government's.