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.
- Draft Non-Permanence Risk Assessment Tool, with its user guideline and the draft text on ecosystem-based approaches — published for comment in June 2026, and the first sign of how CCTS will treat reversal risk in forestry: a risk rating, assessed over 100 years, that sets a buffer deposit. Not yet adopted.
- Draft Detailed Procedure for Programme of Activities — published for comment in June 2026, for grouping many activities that share a methodology under one programme, the structure smallholder projects usually need. Not yet adopted.
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. The two drafts matter for a different reason: until they are adopted, how a forestry project's reversal risk and aggregation will be handled under CCTS is still open. See also the offset mechanism explained.
Which projects have been proposed under the offset mechanism?
Four, each as a draft project design document published for public comment — and none has been registered. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency publishes each draft PDD on its own website, citing the Detailed Procedure for Offset Mechanism, and invites comments by email for about a month. The four so far:
- Kosher Biogas Programme — Kosher Climate India Private Limited: household biogas in rural Karnataka under BM AG04.001, published 5 February 2026. The draft estimates 5,059 tCO₂e a year.
- Hydrogen production using methane extracted from biogas — Firstgreen Consulting Private Limited: Napier-grass biogas at Suratgarh and Hanumangarh, Rajasthan, under BM IN02.002, published 11 February 2026. The draft estimates 17,423 tCO₂e a year.
- NaviRex Distributed Hybrid Solar-BESS Aggregation Pilot — Navirex India Private Limited: distributed solar with battery storage across several districts of Kerala, under BM EN01.001, published 10 August 2026. The draft estimates 2,130 tCO₂ a year.
- Biomass based boiler project — Falcon Agrifriz Foods Private Limited: a biomass-fired boiler at Sadra village, Mehsana district, Gujarat, under BM EN01.003, published 10 August 2026. The draft estimates 47,497 tCO₂e a year.
Every comment window has now closed, the last on 9 September 2026, and the Indian Carbon Market portal's list of registered projects was still empty when this page was reviewed on 14 September 2026. A published draft is a proposal, not a credited project: validation, registration, verification and issuance all still lie ahead of it, and the annual figures above are each developer's own estimate. None of the four is a forestry project, so there is not yet a published example of BM FR05.001 or BM FR05.002 applied to a real site.
What is still in draft?
Several documents 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 draft methodologies cover shore-side electricity supply, recovery and recycling from end-of-life vehicles, mass rapid transit, accelerated carbon mineralization and cooking energy, each with a comment template. Beyond the methodologies, three procedure-level drafts were published for comment in June 2026 — the Programme of Activities procedure, the text on ecosystem-based approaches, and the Non-Permanence Risk Assessment Tool — and draft G.S.R. 517(E) of 26 June 2026 would set targets for the iron and steel sector. The status column in the table below marks every one of them, and none had a final version on either government site when this page was reviewed on 14 September 2026.
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.