Planet talk: Climate & efforts

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change had a Conference of Parties (COP-22) meeting at Marrakesh, Morocco, which came to a close on  November 18. At COP-21 in Paris last year, world leaders made a deal, also known as the Paris Agreement — a historic development in climate change action. This followed intense discussion, following which the countries agreed to explore options for restricting warming to 1.5ºC.

In this backdrop, this year’s COP was expected to be a relatively low-profile event. It was expected to take stock of the actions taken by individual nations towards achieving their respective Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). But Donald Trump’s stunning win changed that situation.

The President-elect of the United States is a self-proclaimed climate sceptic.  During his campaign, he famously said climate change was a “hoax created by China so as to make US manufacturing non-competitive”. He further promised to re-negotiate the Paris Agreement.

Trump’s election as the President of the United States, the world’s second highest annual GHG emitter and the highest cumulative emitter, therefore raised serious concerns in the climate change community.  The undercurrents of this were felt right through COP-22. If the US were to step away from its commitments, that would mean the end of the Paris Agreement.  However, to take a complete U-turn on policies is easier said than done. The present Secretary of State, John Kerry, alluded to this when he mentioned that “issues look different when you are actually in office compared to when you are on the campaign trail”. So while it is premature to speculate on Trump administration’s climate change policies, it is unlikely to be a paradigm shift from that of the Obama administration.  

As far as India is concerned, the Marrakech COP presented an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to action on climate change.  India’s NDCs are focused on the theme of Sustainable Lifestyles.

India is a distant third among the world’s GHG emitters and its per capita emissions at two tonnes per capita are among the lowest. In Paris, India made a bold policy announcement — to reduce the emission’s intensity of its GDP by 33-35 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Further, India committed that fossil-free sources would contribute 40 per cent of the power generation capacity by the same time. Since India has already committed to 175 GW of renewables by 2022, the NDC promise adds additional generation capacity.

For a developing country, which still has a large population living below the poverty line, these are indeed ambitious policy announcements. It effectively amounts to an alternate growth pathway, one in which economic development need not necessarily be entirely dependent on fossil fuels. Historically, economic growth achieved by the developed countries has been highly dependent on fossil fuels. Most countries, including China, underwent a period of intense fossilisation, reaching its peak, and then made commitments and took pledges to reduce their emissions. In India’s case, however, such a period never occurred. Therefore, India’s NDCs implicitly assume an alternate growth trajectory based on the theme of sustainable lifestyles. In fact, what India is attempting is an innovative experiment that, if successful, could be a model for other developing countries to emulate.

Some of India’s development sectors may still continue to rely on fossil fuels, at least in the near future.  For instance, millions of Indians use biomass for cooking, which, besides being inefficient, is also polluting. These individuals are expected to gradually move towards cleaner cooking fuels such as LPG and CNG, thus increasing the oil demand. Similarly, India’s transport sector is heavily dependent on oil; in the absence of large-scale public transport. These sectors could possibly increase the country’s CO2 intensity of GDP.

Therefore, the role of energy efficiency is crucial for India to achieve its NDC commitments. A large part of India’s infrastructure is still a work in progress. It is also important at this stage to ensure that we don’t get locked into carbon-intensive infrastructure. There is great potential to include energy-efficient technologies across all sectors, in particular, residential, industry, commercial, agriculture, etc. Thus, considerable scope exists for innovative policies and business models. For instance, the price of light-emitting diode bulbs has decreased in recent years, mainly because of the bulk procurement model. Similarly, India adopted a market-based mechanism (Perform, Achieve and Trade) to improve energy efficiency of manufacturing industries such as cement, and iron and steel.

Being a country of this size only provides the opportunity for scaling up of options. But, it is important for India to succeed in these efforts for the success of the Paris Agreement.