Climate Change Mitigation

Call for action on climate finance, international technology transfer, and capacity building is India’s central agenda at COP 27 and has been our focus at past COPs as well. So far, there is some information and discussion and certain action points on climate finance; however, there is little clarity with respect to technology transfer mechanisms and capacity building.

The embracing of rapid urbanisation for better lifestyles has led to mindless concretisation, proving to be one of the biggest threats to the outdoor temperature in cities.
Commonly known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, this localised phenomenon causes a rise in the land surface temperature (LST) as materials absorb and retain heat. This leads to a series of direct and indirect impacts on citizens, biodiversity, and emissions.

India announced its net-zero target for the year 2070. Long-term projection models are expected to play an important role in developing India’s strategies to achieve this target. However, developing such long-term strategies is a very complex and challenging task because of the uncertainties involved in looking at such long-time horizons.

The Ministry of Power (MoP) recently came out with renewable purchase obligation (RPO) targets for up to 2030. These targets mandate a specific percentage of the total electricity consumed in all states to be from renewable energy (RE) sources. The move is aligned with India’s COP26 commitments of increasing its RE share in the electricity mix to 50% by 2030. India is battling against climate change and trying to phase down coal and the current RE targets and policies are highly ambitious and challenging.

Meeting India’s short- and long-term climate commitments made at COP26 entails a complete economic transformation, which can have considerable developmental tradeoffs. Many long-term energy and climate models that project low-carbon pathways for the country consider the gross domestic product (GDP) to be exogenously driving growth in various sectors. However, low-carbon policies or technologies will also impact GDP, as well as other economic variables like employment and income.

Almost 10 per cent of the total GHG emissions in India come from its transport sector. Attaining the ‘net zero’ goal calls for strong sectoral interventions, therefore.

Climate finance was one of the most contested issues at COP26 in Glasgow last November. Along with other emerging and vulnerable countries, India demanded greater climate action from the developed world, especially for providing climate finance.

Emissions from the Indian transport sector currently account for almost 10 per cent of the country’s total GHG emissions, mandating significant sectoral interventions for attaining the ‘net zero’ goal.

Strategies to reduce emissions from the transport sector include electric vehicle (EV) adoption, shift to public transport (PT), and non-motorised transport (NMT). These typically require substantial behavioural change.

The year 2021-22 has been a milestone year in many ways for climate action in India. While a lot more could have been done (as is always the case), the wins cannot be ignored. The highlight was of course India’s ‘net zero by 2070’ announcement at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), along with other announcements on short-term targets for renewable energy and emissions reduction.

The 2015 Paris Agreement required countries to submit their long-term climate action strategies by 2020. At COP26, India made a surprise announcement of a target to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2070, which means it will aim to balance the amount of carbon dioxide emitted with the amount absorbed.