The first project meeting for City Level Carbon Emissions Reduction Project was organized on 4 March 2008 by ICLEI South Asia in collaboration with the British High Commission, British Council, NIUA at NIUA, New Delhi on March 4, 2008. A team of additional commissioner, deputy commissioners and project engineers represented the cities of Thane, Rajkot, Bhopal, Indore, Vijaywada and Visakhapatnam at the meeting. These cities were shortlisted from an evaluation of an expression of interest sent by each city for this project. Each of these cities presented the enablers and city level initiatives in the area of renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable development and public private partnership projects completed, ongoing or planned to address the energy security and climate change issues.

Mr. Daniel Shepherd, First Secretary, Energy & Sustainable Development, British High Commission chaired the inaugural session and extended full support to the initiative by ICLEI South Asia. He also shared the information on city level initiatives by UK cities on energy efficiency and renewable energy towards a secure low carbon future and stressed the need of similar initiatives in Indian cities. Prof. Chetan Vaidya, Director NIUA shared his views on urbanization, expanding cities and issues of climate change and energy security for Indian cities. Two cities will be selected on the basis of their presentations at the meeting to work on the project through a five milestone process.