Climate change mitigation involves strategies aimed at decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting renewable energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and implementing sustainable practices. CSTEP focuses on building models to simulate India's future across sectors, such as transport, industries, buildings, agriculture, and forestry, to find interventions required to achieve a sustainable and secure future. Our work also involves the study of certain themes that cut across sectors (quality of life and development vs climate action, water and land demands for agriculture vs power, etc).
CSTEP's SAFARI model: Balancing development with climate action requires a good understanding of the interactions between sectors, natural resource systems, and environmental externalities. The Climate Change Mitigation at CSTEP has undertaken a modelling study with the aim to provide such an understanding and help create scenarios for low-carbon development through the use of an interactive simulation tool called Sustainable Alternative Futures for India (SAFARI). You can access the tool here.
SAFARI estimates the energy, emissions, and resources implications of achieving developmental goals such as food, housing, healthcare, education, power for all, and transport up to 2050. The user interface allows you to explore these implications as well as the trade-offs between them. Using SAFARI, you can create integrated scenarios across sectors and test out the impact of policy choices on energy, emissions, and resources. Ultimately, we hope that this tool can be used to provide insights into developing and tracking India's long-term strategy (LTS) in line with the Paris Agreement. For more information, please contact safari@cstep.in
Press Release: Decarbonising India’s transport sector: Navigating trade-offs of biofuel use and electrification
As India is on a trajectory to decarbonise the transport sector and reach its net-zero goals by 2070, it is imperative to closely examine decarbonisation strategies to avoid any unintended economic and natural resource–related trade-offs. Bengaluru-based think tank, Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP)’s latest study highlights that sustaining 10% ethanol blending (E10) might be the right way forward, considering it avoids any trade-offs between food and fuel and existing vehicles and infrastructure are already E10-compliant.
Macroeconomic impacts of decarbonising mobility in India
India committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2070 at COP26 in Glasgow. Decarbonising the transport sector is crucial in accomplishing this target. Road transport accounted for 12% of India’s energy-related emissions in 2022. These emissions are projected to increase in the future because of a rise in population and urbanisation. Transport sector decarbonisation policies in India revolve around two key interventions: ethanol blending with petrol and electrification of vehicles.
Towards the long-term sustainability of ethanol use in India
It is well established that to achieve net-zero emissions, decarbonising the transport sector is crucial. In 2022, road transport contributed to around 12% of India’s energy-related CO2 emissions. The contribution is expected to double by 2050.
Decarbonising India’s transport sector: Navigating trade-offs of biofuel use and electrification
Decarbonising the transport sector is essential not only to achieve the net-zero target but also to improve quality of life through benefits such as better air, reduced traffic-related woes, and urban heat management. Studies have modelled low-carbon strategies for the transport sector in India, with a focus on energy demand and emissions, but the cross-sectoral trade-offs of the strategies, such as their impact on land, water, and material use, are often missed.
Social accounting matrix construction and multiplier analysis
A social accounting matrix (SAM) can be used to estimate key macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), gross value added (GVA), material input intensity, labour and capital intensity, average savings rate, per capita income of households, etc. They can also serve as a database for more complex models like the multiplier and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models.
Systems thinking for doughnut cities
As a populous, dense, and developing country, India needs a comprehensive urbanisation strategy for the coming decades to control its greenhouse gas emissions trajectory. This will also impact the quality of life of Indians as they migrate to urban areas. While many of India’s big cities currently rank poorly in the global liveability index, we believe that planning for policies towards doughnut cities can help achieve sustainable development without exceeding planetary boundaries.
Policy strategies to decarbonise the buildings sector
The Sustainable Alternative Futures for India (SAFARI) model (Kumar et al., 2021) estimates that the buildings sector—directly and indirectly, through its interlinkages with industry and power sectors—accounts for around 30% of India’s annual energy demand and 26% of the nation’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. With the increasing rate of urbanisation and the associated infrastructure development, this is expected to rise further.
India’s need to curb black carbon emissions
At the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November 2021, India pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070, positioning itself as a frontrunner in the race to carbon neutrality. According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, India had installed a renewable energy capacity of over 180 GW by 2023 and is expected to meet its target of 500 GW by 2030.
Press Release: Pathways to Steer India's Buildings Sector Towards a Net-Zero Future
New Delhi, 18 March 2024: ‘By 2030, India is expected to be home to 6 megacities with populations above 10 million. Currently, 17% of India’s urban population lives in slums.