US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, a member of the environmentally correct Clinton-Gore team, will over the next two days travel from the plush five-star environs of a Delhi hotel -- where he will address and cajole Indian corporate barons into internalising the ``clean is good credit'' motto -- to the South Block quarters of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh.

A trip to the ghats of Varanasi, where he could have waxed eloquent on cleaning up the Ganga, is now off because he has to urgently get back to Washington.

Richardson's trip could turn out to be the yardstick for measuring the renewed Indo-US relationship-in-the-making. In his meetings spanning a mere 24 hours, Richardson is also expected to discuss the impending visit of President Clinton tothe sub-continent -- evidently, the Pakistani leg of Clinton's tour is off because of the military coup -- as well as exchange views on civilian nuclear energy cooperation.

But with the US now unable to ratify the CTBT and India in no particular hurry to do so, the central message of the Richardson visit is that New Delhi must extend its economic reforms to the energy sector. In the afternoon, Richardson and Singh will sign a comprehensive joint statement on cooperation in energy.

What he is said to be really hoping for, though, is Indo-US partnership on a novel concept mentioned in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol -- the ``clean development mechanism'' (CDM). US environmentalists say the concept has the potential to win the heart of even the rogue polluter.

According to Katie McGinty, a senior advisor on environmental issues in the White House -- she is said to be close to both Clinton and Gore -- and is currently working with the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), the CDM is more than an idea whose timehas come.

``It looks at both the North and the South working together as partners, rather than as antagonists. To generate a dialogue between the two to clean up the environment in a more effective way,'' she told The Indian Express here.

First thought up by Brazil, the CDM is currently being shaped by the US in an effort to respond to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions. The idea is that since greenhouse gases don't respect geographical frontiers, New Delhi, also a member of the Kyoto Protocol, however, doesn't seem completely ready to accept the CDM as its central energy mantra. Sources here pointed out that the Government would prefer a comprehensive dialogue on energy that would include cooperation in both conventional and non-conventional sources.

According to McGinty, there's no aid tied to the CDM, no money involved, no strings attached. The pollution itself is the currency of choice, calculated in units. In exchange for the much cheaper Indian clean-up which they would pay for,the US company would win ``credit points.''

``The atmosphere,'' pointed out McGinty, ``doesn't recognise whether the clean-up is being undertaken in a factory in Chicago or Calcutta...If you think about the chasms that separate the developed and developing worlds, the CDM could level the playing field.''

Under Kyoto, each country has been given a certain target to lower its pollution levels. Since the developed world -- mainly, the US, Western Europe and Japan -- is responsible for 80 per cent of the world's pollution, the idea here is that US companies could work with their Indian counterparts to clean up the Indian atmosphere and get credit under the Kyoto target.

From Chicago to Calcutta and Detroit to Delhi, said McGinty, Indian and US industries could work together as partners.