India and Japan publish the rulebook for joint carbon credits

India and Japan on 30 September launched the operational manual for their Joint Crediting Mechanism, the rulebook that turns a 2025 memorandum into projects that can issue carbon credits. Ambassador Keiichi Ono and Tanmay Kumar, then secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, released it in New Delhi. The Press Information Bureau put the launch on the record this week.

The mechanism sits under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, the clause that lets two countries transfer mitigation outcomes. India and Japan signed the memorandum of cooperation on 7 August 2025. They adopted the rules of implementation on 8 June 2026. The manual is the third document, and the first that tells a project developer what to file.

The cycle in the manual runs from a project idea note to the issuance and authorisation of JCM credits. That sequence is the part that was missing. A memorandum can promise technology and finance. It cannot register a plant. The manual sets the steps between the two: how an idea is submitted, how it is checked, how a reduction is counted, and who authorises the credit so that it can move between the two inventories without being counted twice.

Japan has run joint crediting with other partners for years. The Indian version is tied to deployment of low-carbon technology, climate finance, and what the two governments call high-integrity reductions and removals. The integrity claim is procedural. A credit that has passed the manual's authorisation step is the one both sides will treat as transferable. A reduction that has not been authorised stays in the Indian inventory.

The dates matter because Article 6 trading has been waiting on exactly this kind of paper. Countries have signed cooperation deals and then stalled on the form a developer must fill. India and Japan now have the form. They do not yet have a published first project. The manual does not name a plant, a gas, or a volume. It names a path.

For an Indian project owner the practical change is the counterparty. A Japanese buyer can take an authorised JCM credit against a Japanese target. That is a different contract from a voluntary credit sold on an open desk. The price, the share of the credit that stays in India, and the technology the Japanese side must bring are commercial terms the manual does not fix. The manual fixes the gate.

Ono and Kumar launched a document, not a tonne. The tonne comes when a project idea note is accepted and a credit is authorised. Until that notice appears, the record is three dates: memorandum on 7 August 2025, rules on 8 June 2026, manual on 30 September 2026, in New Delhi, under Article 6.2.

Article 6.2 is the clause that worries inventory accountants. A tonne reduced in India and claimed in Japan, without a corresponding adjustment, is a tonne counted twice. The manual's authorisation step is the adjustment. Japan can put the credit on its books only after India has authorised the transfer. That is the integrity the two governments are advertising, and it is a procedure, not a slogan.

The technology side is still open. The memorandum speaks of advanced low-carbon equipment and of finance that moves with it. The manual does not list eligible technologies. A hydrogen pilot, a waste-heat line and a grid battery could all, in principle, file a project idea note. The first accepted note will show which of those the two sides actually want.

Until that note is public, the launch on 30 September is a change in paperwork, which is what this mechanism was missing. Developers who have been waiting since the August 2025 memorandum now have a form. They do not have a price.