India Pledges to Curb Greenhouse Gas Growth.
New Delhi — As the last major economy to submit a target for a global climate pact, India is pledging to reduce the intensity of its carbon emissions and boost the share of electricity produced from sources other than fossil fuels to 40 percent by 2030.India has pledged to slash its emissions intensity relative to economic growth and make a massive push on clean energy by 2030 as part of its formal submission to the United Nations ahead of landmark global warming negotiations in Paris. The world’s third-largest carbon polluter filed its climate action plan to the Germany-based U.N. climate secretariat late Thursday, the deadline for pledges before a December conference in Paris where governments are supposed to adopt a landmark deal to fight climate change.
Referencing yoga, ancient Sanskrit texts and Mahatma Gandhi—on whose 146th birthday the plan is being formally unveiled today in New Delhi—the submission argues that India’s right to pull itself out of poverty is not necessarily incompatible with protecting the environment. Gandhi, an ardent environmentalist, the Indian government said it would slash the rate of emissions relative to gross domestic product by 33-35 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels. At the same time, it lays out some hard-as-coal truths. “In order to secure reliable, adequate and affordable supply of electricity, coal will continue to dominate power generation in future,” India’s intended nationally determined contribution (INDC) reads. “One of the important areas of global collaborative research should be clean coal and fossil fuel, energy management and storage systems for renewable energy. Given the current stage of dependence of many economies on coal, such an effort is an urgent necessity.” The blueprint outlines an action plan for decarbonizing energy-intensive sectors like transportation and building.
Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said India held its submission back so it could coordinate its filing with the Indian holiday celebrating Gandhi’s birthday on Friday. “Our every action will be cleaner than what it was earlier,” Javadekar told reporters, insisting that Indian traditions and culture are already “at one with nature.” “It is estimated that more than half of India of 2030 is yet to be built,” the government said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made manufacturing and job creation a key promise of his administration, and has implored foreign companies and governments, with the slogan “Make in India,” to help. “India now has positioned itself as a global leader in clean energy, and is poised to play an active and influential role in the international climate negotiations this December,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a group based in New York.
It also details what India must do to protect water, agriculture and communities’ health and physical safety from floods, droughts and other increasingly devastating impacts of climate change. Climate analyst Samir Saran at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank, also described India’s targets as ambitious and “rooted in Indian reality,” given the fact that at least 300 million citizens — a fourth of the population — still have no access to electricity at all, while hundreds of millions more make do with just a few hours a day. Not part of the target but highlighted as a major undertaking was India’s current goal of expanding its current 35 gigawatts of clean energy capacity to 175 GW by 2022, while responding to a fourfold energy consumption growth. India also promised aggressive reforestation efforts, with enough new trees to absorb up to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, and laid out plans for adapting to changing weather and temperatures. “This is a positive and novel Indian approach,” Saran said, adding that India was effectively sharing responsibility for taking action to protect the climate while seeking global partnerships on implementing those plans.
India plans a fivefold boost in renewable energy capacity in the next five years to 175 gigawatts, including solar power, wind, biomass and small hydropower dams. The INDC does not say how much of that should come from the international community, but argues that “meaningful and adequate” finance will be key to achieving the targets. “If the world indeed is concerned about its new investments to be climate friendly, it must consider the opportunity provided by a country like India,” the report argues. The INDCs from 120 countries, including the 28-member-state European Union, will collectively make up a new global climate change accord that leaders hope to broker in Paris in December.
She acknowledged that the government’s emissions intensity target could have been more ambitious—a target of 40 to 45 percent had been floated in the media. Scientists say the heat-trapping carbon emissions released by the burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — are a key driver of rising temperatures that could lead to potentially catastrophic impacts, including flooding of island nations and intensifying droughts. Like other developed countries, the U.S. and the EU committed to absolute reduction targets, while China pledged that its emissions would stop growing by 2030.
Two climate research groups this week said the pledges put forth before the Paris conference would slow global warming but projected that temperatures would still rise by between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees C (4.9 and 6.3 degrees F). Chinese President Xi Jinping, by contrast, made China’s two major climate change unveilings while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with President Obama, first in Beijing last year and later in the White House Rose Garden.
Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate staff member, said the plan “predictably” emphasizes growth through coal expansion, and called on India to truly show its commitment to climate action by agreeing to restrict hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFCs), a potent contributor to climate change, under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. “India must also do more to encourage private-sector investment in solar and other clean energy, including by reforming their notoriously corrupt and inefficient government bureaucracy, or investors will stay away and throw serious doubt [on] their laudable renewable energy goals,” Bledsoe said. Without moving away from coal and enacting major structural reforms in the utility sector, he noted, it’s unclear if even meeting the 175 GW of renewable energy goal would do much to reduce India’s emissions. “If they meet it, it will be a miracle.