India, the world’s third biggest carbon-emitting country, said Friday it was “confident” it could cut its emissions intensity by 35 percent by 2030 in the run-up to a key conference in Paris later this year.
The environment minister Prakash Javadekar announced India’s climate pledges after the
government submitted to the UN a new plan for tackling climate change, ahead
of the COP21 meeting in November that will seek to forge a global agreement
on curbing Earth-warming emissions.
“We are confident we will achieve the 35 percent (target) by 2030,” Prakash Javadekar said, adding: “it is a huge jump for India, therefore it is a very ambitious target”.
“The developed world has polluted the Earth and we are suffering. Still, we
want to become part of the solution and give results,” he said.
India made the pledge to cut emissions intensity — the amount of pollution
per dollar of GDP — as part of its Intended Nationally Determined
Contributions or INDCs, in a document published on a UN website early Friday.
It also committed to generating 40 percent of its electricity from
renewable sources by the end of 2030 “with the help of transfer of technology
and low cost international finance”.
The new goals would take India’s capacity for renewable energy by 2030 to
more than double the 175,000 megawatts currently targeted. The government
estimated at least $2.5 trillion would be required to achieve India’s climate
change goals, which include increasing forest cover, between now and 2030.
The environment minister’s announcement came as Prime Minister Narendra
Modi launched a solar-powered district court building in the insurgency-
wracked and impoverished central state of Jharkhand.
“Despite huge developmental challenges, India has put forward a climate
action plan that is far superior to ones proposed by the US and EU,” Sandeep
Chachra, ActionAid India’s Executive Director, said.
The Climate Group, an environmental NGO, also welcomed the plan.
“The fact that India is a developing economy should not be seen as a
constraint but as an opportunity to demonstrate to others how ambitious
growth can be achieved through a clean industrial revolution and building a
strong low carbon economy,” Krishnan Pallassana, the group’s India director,
said.
– Coal reliance ‘baffling’ –
But New Delhi stressed in its UN submission that coal will “continue to
dominate power generation in future” to help end crippling blackouts and
bring power to more than 300 million Indians currently living without
electricity.
However, environmental campaigners criticised the move to continue coal
use as hurting green efforts.
“India’s continued commitment to expand coal power capacity is baffling.
Further expansion of coal power will hamper India’s development prospects,”
said Pujarini Sen, a senior Greenpeace India campaigner.
India has resisted pledging targets as big as those of rival China, which
vowed in June to reduce its carbon intensity by 60 to 65 percent over 15
years, and also bring its absolute emissions to a peak by “around 2030”.
Modi came under pressure over the issue during his trip to the US for the
recent UN General Assembly, with US President Barack Obama stressing that
“India’s leadership in this upcoming conference will set the tone not just
for today but for decades to come”.
Asia’s third-largest economy fears committing to a peaking year would
compromise efforts to boost living standards in a country where more than a
quarter of its 1.2 billion people are poor.
Developing countries want rich nations to bear a bigger share of the burden
for curbing emissions, which requires a costly shift from cheap fossil fuels
to less polluting energy sources, and accuse them of hypocrisy in heaping
demands on poorer nations.
In Paris, nations will aim to seal a pact to cap temperature rises at no
more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times.
The level is still expected to cause droughts and disasters but is
considered by scientists to be comparatively manageable.