INDO EURO CLIMATE & ENERGY COUNCIL
Advancing India–Europe cooperation for climate and energy action
An independent bilateral platform connecting public institutions, industry, finance, research and civil society to support practical cooperation and measurable outcomes.
ABOUT THE COUNCIL
A focused platform for sustained bilateral engagement
The Indo Euro Climate & Energy Council (IECEC) connects experts, proven solutions and green-finance professionals from India and Europe with governments and cities working to deploy climate intervention and mitigation solutions.
IECEC brings together complementary strengths: European technology, standards and capital, and Indian scale, ambition and natural capital. It provides a neutral forum for policy dialogue, technical exchange and partnership development.
The Council works to turn shared priorities into credible programmes, investments and implementation partnerships across climate policy, clean energy, industrial transition, finance, natural capital and governance.
OUR PURPOSE
From shared priorities to practical cooperation
Convene
Enable informed dialogue among Indian and European institutions and leaders.
Connect
Build partnerships across government, industry, finance, academia and civil society.
Deliver
Support credible initiatives that advance climate resilience and the energy transition.
WORK & ACTIVITIES
Six Centres holding eight categories of Council work
IECEC’s work is organised across six Centres, each holding one or two categories and a defined set of activities. Select a Centre to read its activities in full.
01MRV, Methodologies and Standards
The Centre compares Indian and European measurement, reporting and verification requirements side by side, and identifies where the two diverge in ways that would prevent a tonne recognised in one system being recognised in the other. It maps the sectors and activity types for which approved methodologies do not yet exist on either side, and sets out what would be required to close those gaps. Findings are prepared for the regulators, standard-setters and verification bodies responsible for the rules.
02Article 6 and International Cooperation
The Centre follows the practice developing around corresponding adjustments and the bilateral arrangements through which internationally transferred mitigation outcomes are authorised. It examines what host country approval requires in the Indian context, and what European buyers need in order to rely on a transferred unit. The work is directed at giving Indian project developers and their counterparts a clear reading of the conditions attached to international transfer.
03CBAM and Trade Exposure
The Centre assesses the exposure of Indian producing sectors to the European carbon border adjustment, working sector by sector rather than in aggregate. It examines reporting obligations, the data producers must hold, and the cost implications as the mechanism moves through its phases. Briefings are prepared for state industry departments, central ministries and the public sector undertakings affected.
04Registries and Market Infrastructure
The Centre examines the architecture of the registries on both sides — how units are issued, held, transferred and retired, and what identifiers and audit trails each system requires. It sets out the conditions that would have to be satisfied for one registry to recognise units originating in the other. The work extends to the settlement, custody and reporting infrastructure that sits behind any cross-border transaction.
05Compliance and Voluntary Market Interface
The Centre studies how compliance obligations and voluntary credits interact within each system and across the two. It examines where voluntary units may be used against compliance obligations, where they may not, and how the boundary is drawn and enforced. This determines what a project developer can realistically sell, to whom, and under what conditions.
06Carbon Pricing and Market Design
The Centre reviews price formation, allocation and market rules as instruments of public policy rather than as investment questions. It examines how caps and allocations are set, how price stability mechanisms operate, and what the design choices imply for obligated entities. The work supports the departments and regulators responsible for market architecture.
01Forest Carbon and REDD+
The Centre works with state forest departments on carbon and biomass assessment, including the use of remote sensing and geospatial methods to establish stock and change across large forest areas. It examines project design, permanence, leakage and the tenure questions that determine whether a forest carbon project can proceed. The work supports departments seeking to understand what their forest estate holds and what can responsibly be developed.
02Blue Carbon and Coastal Systems
The Centre maps the carbon potential held in mangrove, seagrass, salt marsh and other coastal systems along the Indian coastline, and examines the methodological state of play for each. It identifies where approved methods exist, where they are contested, and where measurement remains too uncertain for issuance. The work is conducted alongside the state departments and coastal authorities responsible for these systems.
03Soil Carbon and Agroforestry
The Centre examines land-based abatement in agricultural systems — soil organic carbon, agroforestry, and the management practices that affect both. It gives particular attention to smallholder aggregation, since Indian landholding patterns make project viability a question of how many farmers can be brought into a single scheme and at what transaction cost. Measurement practice, sampling design and verification burden are assessed against what is achievable in the field.
04Ecosystem Restoration
The Centre compares restoration delivery models across Asia and Europe, drawing on the experience of multilateral development institutions and European restoration programmes. It examines how restoration work is scoped, sequenced, financed and verified in each setting, and what transfers usefully between them. The comparison is intended to give Indian counterparts a realistic view of what restoration at scale requires.
05Biodiversity and Nature-Based Solutions
The Centre assesses nature-based approaches and their standing within both systems — what is recognised, what is emerging, and what remains outside any framework. It examines biodiversity outcomes as a distinct objective rather than as a co-benefit of carbon work, and considers how they are measured and evidenced. The work anticipates the direction of both Indian and European policy in this area.
06Ecosystem Assessment and Inventory
The Centre establishes ecological baselines: the extent of an asset, its condition, the stock it holds, and how each is changing over time. This is the measurement work that must precede any project design, valuation or financing decision, and it draws on inventory practice already used by Indian forest and environment departments. Assessment methods are aligned wherever possible with the MRV requirements examined in Centre 01.
01Blended and Concessional Finance
The Centre identifies the concessional and blended instruments available to fund solutions the Council has identified, and the institutions that provide them. It examines what each requires of a recipient, the conditions attached and the timescales involved, so that public and development capital is reachable for implementing partners.
02Green Bonds and Debt Instruments
The Centre tracks issuance practice in both markets and examines how debt instruments apply to public sector and municipal climate projects. It considers the reporting and use-of-proceeds obligations issuance carries, and whether the underlying projects can meet them.
03Project Bankability, De-risking and Risk Transfer
The Centre establishes what implementing partners require to reach financial close: the evidence, the structure, and the risk allocation lenders and investors will accept. It examines de-risking structures including first-loss and credit enhancement, and the guarantee instruments that move political, regulatory, weather and delivery risk to parties able to carry it.
04Transition Finance
The Centre examines the funding routes available to hard-to-abate sectors, where abatement is expensive and the transition is measured in decades rather than years. It considers the instruments designed for gradual transition rather than immediate substitution, and the credibility conditions attached to them. The work connects to the industrial questions examined in Centre 04.
05Adaptation and Resilience Finance
The Centre identifies capital available for adaptation and resilience work, which states and cities carry but which attracts far less finance than mitigation. It examines the instruments that exist, the evidence they require, and why adaptation projects have proved harder to fund. The work is directed at making resilience investment reachable for the authorities responsible for it.
06Forest and Land Use Finance
The Centre matches the forest and land use solutions identified in Centre 02 to the funding sources capable of supporting them. It examines what forest and land-based projects require in terms of upfront capital, revenue timing and duration, and which instruments accommodate those characteristics. The work addresses the long lead times that distinguish land-based projects from most other climate investment.
07Blue Economy Finance
The Centre identifies capital for coastal, marine and port-linked activity, covering the wider blue economy rather than blue carbon alone. It examines financing for coastal protection, sustainable fisheries, port decarbonisation and marine infrastructure, and the institutions active in each. The work reflects the length of the Indian coastline and the economic activity it supports.
08Biodiversity and Nature-Positive Investment
The Centre explores investment routes that deliver biodiversity outcomes, an area where instruments remain less developed than in carbon. It examines emerging structures, the measurement and evidence they depend on, and the institutions willing to underwrite them. The work anticipates a market that is forming rather than one that is established.
01Renewable Energy and Grid Integration
The Centre reviews the constraints that limit renewable integration at state level — transmission capacity, curtailment, balancing requirements and the readiness of distribution utilities. It examines what each state faces in its own circumstances rather than treating the grid as a single national system. The work supports state energy departments and the utilities reporting to them.
02Green Hydrogen and Alternative Fuels
The Centre tracks the deployment of hydrogen and alternative fuels and examines their realistic application within Indian industry. It considers cost, infrastructure requirements, offtake and the sectors where substitution is technically feasible in the near term. European experience is examined for what transfers and what does not.
03Hard-to-Abate Industry
The Centre examines abatement routes for cement, steel and chemicals, where emissions arise from the process itself and not only from the energy used. It assesses the technologies available, their maturity, and the cost of abatement in each sector. The work connects directly to the CBAM exposure assessed in Centre 01 and the transition finance examined in Centre 03.
04Energy Efficiency and Demand Management
The Centre assesses efficiency measures across public and industrial demand, including buildings, municipal services, water systems and industrial processes. It examines the measures that deliver reliably, the financing routes available for them, and the institutional arrangements required to implement them at scale. Much of this work sits with states and urban local bodies.
05Circular Economy and Materials
The Centre works with states and urban local bodies on materials and waste systems, where circularity is a municipal responsibility before it is a corporate one. It examines collection, segregation, processing and recovery, and the emissions consequences of each. The work addresses systems that already exist and function imperfectly rather than systems yet to be built.
06Industrial Process Emissions, Power Sector Reform, Energy Storage and Sustainable Manufacturing
The Centre covers process emissions arising directly from industrial chemistry; power sector structure including distribution utility finances, tariff design and market arrangements; storage across batteries, pumped hydro and grid-scale systems; and production-side measures in manufacturing. These are treated together because they are interdependent — storage economics depend on market design, and process abatement depends on both power supply and industrial investment.
01Bilateral and Multilateral Cooperation
The Centre maintains the Council's engagement across institutions on both sides, holding the relationships through which its other work reaches the parties who can act. It tracks the cooperation instruments already in force between India and Europe, and identifies where the Council's work fits within them. This is the connective function on which the Council's access depends.
02State and City Climate Governance
The Centre supports state governments and urban local bodies on climate mandates and the institutional arrangements required to carry them. It examines how responsibility is distributed between departments, where authority is unclear, and what capacity exists at each level. The work recognises that Indian climate delivery is substantially a state and municipal question.
03Regulatory and Legal Frameworks
The Centre compares the regulatory and legal frameworks governing climate action in both jurisdictions and identifies where policy change would be required for an identified solution to proceed. It examines statutory authority, subordinate rules, and the administrative practice that determines how rules operate. Findings are prepared as policy suggestions for the institutions holding the mandate.
04Institutional Capacity Building
The Centre works on the capacity of public institutions to carry climate work — the skills, systems and staffing required to administer a carbon programme, run a measurement regime, or manage a restoration project. It identifies where capacity is the binding constraint rather than policy or finance. The work is conducted with the institutions themselves rather than about them.
05Public Leadership and Administration
The Centre works with senior administrators on the delivery of climate mandates, addressing the practical questions of sequencing, coordination and accountability that determine whether a mandate produces an outcome. It draws on experience from both administrations. The work is directed at the officers who carry the responsibility.
06Climate Diplomacy
The Centre follows the negotiating positions and diplomatic developments relevant to the India–Europe corridor, including the international processes that shape what each side can agree to. It examines how positions taken multilaterally constrain or enable bilateral arrangements. The work keeps the Council's other Centres informed of the wider setting.
01Project Development and Implementation
The Centre defines the solution to an identified challenge in sufficient detail for it to be delivered, then hands implementation to third-party partners. It specifies scope, sequence, and the conditions the delivery arrangement must satisfy. The Council does not itself implement; its role at this stage is definition and handover.
02Technology Deployment and Transfer
The Centre identifies technologies suited to Indian operating conditions and routes them to the partners positioned to deploy them. It examines what works in Indian conditions rather than what performs well elsewhere, and considers cost, servicing and skills requirements. Technologies are presented for selection by decision-makers, who choose following their own due diligence.
03Just Transition and Community Engagement
The Centre ensures that communities affected by an intervention are accounted for in its design and delivery, including those whose livelihoods depend on the activity being changed. It examines consultation, consent and benefit-sharing arrangements, and the tenure and rights questions that arise in land-based projects. This work runs alongside delivery rather than following it.
04Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Reporting
The Centre assesses whether an implemented solution has created value in practice, and whether it can be scaled. Evaluation is conducted against what was intended at the point of definition, and reported whether or not the finding is favourable. This is the closing stage of the Council's cycle and the basis on which work is carried forward.
05Knowledge Transfer and Training
The Centre transfers method and practice to the institutions and delivery partners doing the work, so that capability remains with them after an intervention concludes. It covers the technical, administrative and reporting practice required to sustain a programme. The intention is that a second project should not require the same support as the first.
06Delivery Partnerships with Public Institutions
The Centre establishes the arrangements through which delivery is carried out — the relationships between the public institution holding the mandate, the implementing partner, and the Council as facilitator. It examines what each arrangement requires in terms of authority, accountability and reporting. Clear arrangements at this stage are what make subsequent evaluation possible.
COUNCIL & ADVISORY MEMBERS
Council & Advisory Members
The Council brings together Indian and European leadership to guide its bilateral climate, energy and institutional agenda.
01N. Narasimha Prasad
Founding Member & Director
02Dr. Rajeev K. Srivastava, IFS (R)
Honorary Adviser
03Gowri Shankar Chandra Mohan
Member & Head of Programmes
04Dr. David Walter
Member — European Council
05Dr. Katrin Trautwein
Member — European Council
06Karthik Durgaprasad
Member — UK & European Council
07M.A. Yannick Bayer
Member — European Council
REGISTERED & PARTNER OFFICE
Connect with the Council
For Council, programme and institutional-partnership enquiries, contact the IECEC Secretariat.
Registered Office — Bengaluru677, 1st Floor, 27th Main, 13th CrossHSR Layout, Sector 1Bengaluru 560 102, Karnataka, India
Partner Office — Chennai4/608, V.O.C. Street, KottivakkamRajiv Gandhi Salai, PerungudiChennai 600 096, Tamil Nadu, India