Trade clean air for green-house gases. What do you get? Pollution? Not necessarily. Money? Almost certainly. Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, most developed countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average 5.20 per cent between 2008 and 2012. The European Union, which is one of its signatories, is trying to meet its target by buying "carbon credits" from developing countries, which are outside the protocol and also pollute less. That has prompted the Indian government and a few other agencies to invest in projects that are non-polluting and, hence, entitled to carbon credits. EDL India has proposed a World Bank-funded project in Chennai that will turn solid municipal waste into energy. Vestas RRB and Suzlon Energy have proposed to generate electricity from wind and biomass. Until now, the lack of a credible third-party certifying agency (to monitor deployment of funds and rate credits) had stood in the way of the projects. But recently, Det Norske Veritas, a UN approved agency, was appointed to certify such projects. Today, rates of Certified Emission Reductions (cers) from India are loosely priced between $4 and $6 per tonne. Although no cers have yet been sold, informal mous are being signed with an eye on the future. Says N.R. Krishnan, a former secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests: "It is worthwhile for European countries to accumulate credits at cheaper rates ahead of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol." Meanwhile, for some Indian companies, green will also mean greenbacks.