Government planners think that, with economic growth of 8-9%, India’s total
emissions of carbon dioxide would more than triple by 2030, from 1.7 billion
tonnes in 2010 to 5.3 billion tonnes. Per-head emissions would increase to 3.6
tonnes. And that assumes a fair amount of energy savings. If India were to
use the same amount of energy per unit of GDP in 2030 as it does now, then
emissions would top 6 billion tonnes by 2030. India is on the way to becoming the
biggest contributor to increases in greenhouse gases within 15 years—a powerful
reason for caring about its progress on environmental matters.
On October 1st Mr Modi’s government filed its emissions plans in advance of
a UN climate conference to take place in Paris
in November. Unlike most other big countries, India refused to set a date at
which the absolute amount of carbon it pumps out would peak and start to fall.
Instead it promised that its carbon intensity—that is, carbon emissions per
unit of GDP—would fall by a third before 2030.
By setting a relative rather than an absolute target, India has come
in for criticism. That is unfair, for to cap emissions would be to deny many
Indians the chance to better their hard lives. The country has more poor people
than anywhere else in the world: 230m living on $1.90 a day or less—the World
Bank’s definition of extreme poverty. Almost half of rural households, or
250m-300m people, have no electricity. For the poor, growth is essential—and
carbon comes with it.
Yet to accept that is not to give up on curbing emissions. India has huge
potential to change its trajectory. To put this in context, consider that plans
announced by Barack Obama’s administration would cut American emissions by
26-28% by 2025, or just under 2 billion tonnes of carbon a year. By contrast,
the difference between a good and a bad outcome in India over the same period,
depending on whether good policies are adopted or not, would amount to almost 3
billion tonnes. In other words, India
could do more good for the climate, as well as more harm, than most.
If there is reason to be optimistic, it is that the environment matters to
Indians themselves. Thirteen of the world’s 20 most-polluted cities are in the
subcontinent. Smoke from cooking with wood or dung in Indian homes may be
responsible for 500,000 early deaths a year, mostly of women and children.
Climate change could do grave harm to India. Some two-thirds of its
agriculture depends on the monsoon, which may become less reliable as a result
of global warming. Some Himalayan glaciers are retreating, sending less water
to rivers that feed hundreds of millions of people downstream. A quarter of
Indians live near coasts that are vulnerable to sea-level rises. Many countries
suffer one or more of these problems. Few have all of them. So while Indians
need growth, they cannot ignore the consequences of it.
Given the environmental pressures, gloom is not hard to find. Jairam Ramesh,
environment minister in the previous Congress-led government, shakes his head
as he reflects on the near-total local opposition to a plan to protect the Western Ghats, a mountain range that is one of the
world’s most biologically diverse regions. “We are losing the battle of ideas,”
he says. Although tree plantations are growing in India, old-growth forests are still
shrinking. Pressure to cut down more trees will increase because most of India’s
untapped coal reserves are underneath its forests. Coal accounts for more than
half of India’s power generation—and
India
plans to double coal output by 2020.
As for water, another crucial environmental resource, for the moment India is one of
the lucky large developing countries with adequate supplies. But according to a
study in 2013 by two UN agencies, it will go from having 1,800 cubic metres of
water per person per year in 2001 to only 1,340 cubic metres in 2025—and little
more than 1,000 cubic metres per head by 2050, which is the international
definition of water scarcity.
As if all that were not enough, Mr Modi came to power in 2014 vowing to
sweep aside regulatory obstacles to growth (including, by implication,
environmental regulations). He vowed to expand a manufacturing sector which, at
17% of GDP, is half the relative size of China’s. Factories pollute more
than services do.
If India
faces a trade-off between growth and greenery, then the only likely outcome is
that growth wins. Yet it is not a simple swap. Rather, the government has
multiple objectives, and this multiplicity makes pro-environment policies more
likely to stick.
To see how, look at energy. The government has four main goals beyond
increasing power to cities and industry. First, it wants to bring electricity
to those without it. Total electricity production has risen sharply in recent
years, but the number of people without power has fallen only slowly. Something
needs to change.
Next, India
wants to improve its energy security by buying less from abroad. At the moment,
the country spends about half its foreign-exchange earnings on fuel imports, an
unusually high share. Though the world’s third-largest coal producer, India imports a
fifth of its coal because domestic mines cannot keep pace. And it imports
four-fifths of its oil. That leaves the country vulnerable to oil shocks, even
if right now it is a beneficiary of cheaper supplies.
Third, with 10m-12m young Indians entering the labour market each year, the
country needs jobs, and factories without power are no way to create them. And
lastly India
needs to reform the inefficient electricity-distribution system. Blackouts and
brownouts are rife, and almost all the state utilities are bankrupt.
India
needs to do all these things regardless of environmental considerations. But
research by the Centre for the Study of Science, Technology and Policy
(C-STEP), a think-tank in Bangalore,
suggests that the energy mix you get if you try to improve access, security and
so on is similar to what you get if you just concentrate on cutting carbon and
preventing deforestation. In other words, the trade-off between doing the right
thing for the economy and the right thing for the environment is not as stark
as it looks.
Again, the energy sector shows why. Given the atrocious quality of the
electricity grid, the quickest way to improve energy access is to supply power
away from the grid through “distributed energy”—things like solar panels on
houses or a micro-grid for a particular village linked, say, to a wind turbine.
Distributed energy can use various sources of power, but renewable energy is
particularly suited to it. Providing villages with reliable energy would allow
families to switch from burning wood and dung to electric stoves, saving many
of the lives now cut short by filthy air.
Solar and wind power are domestic energy supplies, so they help conserve
foreign exchange. Import substitution is usually a bad idea, because it keeps
prices high and makes producers lazy. But in many parts of the country solar
and wind are competitive on price. Electricity from power stations that run on
imported coal costs about 6 rupees (9 cents) per kilowatt-hour. In Karnataka
state, in the south, new providers of solar power are selling it for 5.5 rupees
per kilowatt-hour, while wind costs about 6 rupees per kilowatt-hour. The solar
business also provides jobs, typically more than from generating power through
burning fossil fuels. Arunabha Ghosh of the Council on Energy, Environment and
Water, a think-tank in Delhi, the capital, reckons that building 100 gigawatts
of solar capacity would produce 1m jobs, albeit most of them short-term.
Lastly, alternative forms of energy might even help solve those problems of
the grid which have their roots in India’s unwise decision to supply
farmers with free electricity to pump water for irrigation. A huge lobby for
subsidised power exists as a consequence, along with neglect of the electricity
infrastructure, the beggaring of utility companies, which lost a staggering
$300 billion in 2012, and a catastrophic overuse of water for farming. Because
pumping water is in effect free, farmers are using groundwater faster than it
can be replenished. In north-west India states are withdrawing up to
nearly three times more water from aquifers than is being recharged by rains.
The perversities of the power sector damage many parts of economy. So expanding
solar and wind power could help with a range of things that have little to do
with the environment but are essential for other reasons. That is the main
justification for thinking greenery can take off even in a country that is
trying to grow as fast as it can.
But the big questions are whether India’s environmental policies are
the right ones and whether they will be overwhelmed by the demands of growth.
The government’s signature policies are a huge expansion in solar and wind
power, a sketchy “100 smart cities” plan to improve urban design and
infrastructure, and a “clean-up India” campaign which includes everything from
better waste management to building over 100m lavatories (about half of Indians
defecate in the open—an environmental crisis in its own right, since it causes
a panoply of diseases).
Soon after coming to office, Mr Modi promised to increase renewable energy
more than fivefold by 2022. This would require doubling solar capacity every 18
months for the next seven years and cost about $100 billion. At a big
conference on renewable energy earlier this year, investors said they would be
happy to build all that and more, but they made financial commitments to less
than a third of their proposals. Mr Modi’s plan would save perhaps 170m tonnes
of carbon a year compared with adding the same amount of power using the
current energy mix. At about 3% of emissions forecast for 2030, that is
something, but not a huge amount.
More important are a number of actions that usually get short shrift when
talking about climate policies. A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory at the University of California calculates that if India switched to
using the most efficient air conditioners, with the least-polluting
refrigerants, it would save over 300m tonnes of carbon a year compared with
expanding sales of current air conditioners—twice as much as the savings from
solar power. India’s
programme to subsidise the replacement of 400m cheap incandescent light bulbs
with dearer LED ones would save 6,000 megawatts of installed
capacity—equivalent to the entire electricity-generating capacity of Nigeria.
And now they can do their homework, too
As for urbanisation, India
has a “last mover” advantage. Perhaps seven-tenths of the urban infrastructure
that it will need in 2030—such as roads, buildings and sewers—has yet to be
built. In the meantime, India
can learn from the lessons of others as they grow. Building compact cities with
efficient transport systems and non-wasteful buildings would go a long way to
slowing the rise of emissions.
Greenish India
So how much would all that achieve? Using varying assumptions about future
policies and actions, five Indian forecasting groups predicted that emissions
in 2030 could be between 3 billion tonnes and 5 billion tonnes a year, compared
with a range of 4 billion tonnes to 5.5 billion tonnes on current trends. It is
a significant difference, but not a huge one. According to C-STEP, the
think-tank in Bangalore, it would be possible to cut emissions by a further
20-30% through more drastic actions, such as having four-fifths of lighting
from LED bulbs by 2030 and sending half of all freight by rail instead of road
rather than 39%, as is planned. That really might help India avoid the
pattern of “grow first, clean up later”.
India
has shown that it can enact reforms that have a big environmental impact. In
the past two years, for example, it has removed a subsidy on diesel consumption
(which subsidised carbon), and replaced subsidised liquefied natural gas with a
cash payment for the poor, encouraging people to use gas less wastefully.
India’s emissions are
still too modest for it to rival China anytime soon. Modest, too,
are its manufacturing sector and middle class, both big polluters. As always, India will go
its own sweet way. But it could do more to make that way greener.
COMMENT:
The author of the article has very elaborately discussed the causes under
proper heading of obstacles India
is eminently and likely to confront to achieve the desired goal to run equal
with China's
achievement.
Modi, PM of India's
desired goal is not extra ordinary and unimplementable but the already
discussed hurdles and the undisclosed existing political, economical,
administrative, and social hurdle which remained outside the discussion in the
article plays a mountain like hurdle to clear if the PM's desired goal is to be
achieved.
In short these are Political infight and unrest, law and order instability,
economical uneven ups and down due to corrupt governess and frequent Change of
economical policy by newly incoming government.
In addition,the most corrupt administrative system that exits in Indian
government are Police department, Ministries, Justice Department, Medical
Department, and least to speak of all other departments all this impacts on
Economical development of a country and are hurdle to any development.
The ugliest is the land garbing system by government of the poor is
unacceptable.
Worst is social corruption has destabilize the law and order situation. The
PM must agree that the smooth development of a country is possible on three
basic principles political Stability, law and order stability and economical
development.
In a home grown terrorist country how far is all these three basic points can
be maintain undisturbed. The Indian PM would know better and needs no further
elucidation.
As far as limiting carbon emission is concerned it is a herculean job. More
research and new mode should be invented to produce electricity That can only
solve the issue.
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