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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

India's carbon footprint dilemma-Nitin Sethi
-The Business Standard
 

Lots of assumptions but little to act upon in the Planning Commission report on low carbon growth

It will take around $834 billion for the Indian economy to put Indian economy on a low carbon mode taking its emission intensity in 2030 down by 42% as compared to 2007 levels. This is the macro picture drawn by the Low Carbon growth study commissioned by India's Planning Commission.

The study is two years late but it is one of the first from the government stable putting the numbers out.

First let's look at the key messages from the report:

1) In business-as-usual mode, the carbon intensity of the economy will reduce by 22% over 2007 levels by 2030.

2) If the country decides to go for deeper costlier cuts in the carbon intensity it will have to shell out a whopping $834 billion (at 2011 rates) between now and 2030 - that's shaving off roughly 3.33% of the GDP of the country by 2030.

3) This requires 50% more investment over the period in the energy sector to partially decarbonise it.

4) In business as usual the annual per capita emissions increase from current about 1.9 to 3.6 tonnes of CO2 by 2030. In the low carbon scenario it reaches 2.6. Either are well below the European or developed world average projections.

But here lies the catch, like all projections there are assumptions and targets to base the low carbon growth route against. Read some of them:

1) India is on an average growing by 7% ever year up to 2030. If that doesn't happen (and it has not been the case for a while now), the business as usual emissions are anyway lower.

2) It requires 75 GW of hydropower capacity. It has built up only 40 MW since independence.

3 It requires 100 GW of solar power capacity. India is unleashing the solar mission but as of now it has only 2 GW of solar power

4) It requires 40 GW of nuclear power. Installed capacity is a mere 4.8 GW and growing painfully slow.

5) Cumulative investments in energy sector go up by 50% over the period compared to the business as usual scenario and energy mix has 33% renewables (including hydro and nuclear) as compared to

6) India still requires 1,980 Million tonnes of coal as compared to 2,789 MT. Half of the coal is from super critical plants.

7) All cities need to be on efficient public transport systems by 2030. No city is in that mode right now.

What can the government do with the report? Very little. It draws only a macro picture of the investments involved and after years of delays, still does not tell the incremental costs of taking different actions - that is what the government needed to know. Which are the low hanging fruits relatively and how much would they cost the economy.

The government has in the meanwhile commissioned a study to consortium of three groups to project future emissions scenario. Yet another is looking at the legal architecture of the new agreement that India wants to push and a third will be soon commissioned to find a formulation for the principle of equity which can be operationalize to distribute the burden of emission reduction across the world. Needless to say, the latter two are meant to help the government advocate a position in the climate negotiations.

India is on track to achieve the target for emission intensity reduction had earlier committed to under the Cancun agreement (20% by 2020 over 2005 levels), the Low Carbon growth study says. India intends to put its new nationally determined target on the global table in March 2015 and not before at the heads of state summit called by the UN Secretary General.

A new government of the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) takes over control soon with a strong absolute majority in one of the two houses of the Parliament. As of now it is not expected to take any dramatically different view of the climate negotiations than the governments before. In the Parliamentary debates earlier, when in opposition, the right of centre BJP has hammered the government as much as the Left parties for deviating from the negotiating lines drawn by political consensus.

The previous government had an influential differing view from within - authored and pushed by the Planning Commission which is now gone with the change of regime. In the previous regime individual ministers have tended to lead at the negotiations with their instincts within the frame of the red-lines drawn by the government. The media is abuzz that under the new regime one is likely to see a more cohesive decision and policy direction commanded by the Prime Minister. Whether that is true is likely to be first seen in the June round of climate negotiations.

Till climate change hits newsmode in India (only after the new government is firmly in the saddle one presumes), I shall try to keep the information flowing through the blogspace here.