Countdown to Copenhagen: Indian Government Unveils Carbon Intensity Target for 2020

Carbon Pledge, At Last

Just days before the launch of the Copenhagen climate change conference, India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh has offered to reduce the country’s amount of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 20-25% between 2005 and 2020. Ramesh also announced that he would be heading to Copenhagen to attend the conference next week and that he would stay for most of the negotiations. The announcement is significant, although remarks by Ramesh back in September that India was drafting legislation to quantify its greenhouse gas emissions cuts, which would include a broad indicative number on C02 emissions consistent with an anticipated annual growth rate of 8-9%, suggests the announcement is not a major policy shift (see India: 18 September 2009: Countdown to Copenhagen: India Agrees to Non-Binding Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cuts). Instead, it is a more detailed statement of India's previous policy. India has stuck firmly to its position not to accept internationally binding CO2 emissions reduction targets that would be subject to outside scrutiny and has reiterated that the voluntary and non-binding 20-25% target is based on the proviso that the country receives support from the international community.

The announcement will take some pressure off the government from the international community, which has been concerned over India's refusal to quantify its CO2 reductions or to outline a peak year after which emissions will have to fall. The government has tried to offer some small concessions to fend off criticism, such as pledging to keep its per-capita CO2 emissions below those of developed countries. However, the Environment and Forestry Ministry estimates that in 2004 India's per-capita emissions were 1.2 tonnes and predicts that they will rise to 5 tonnes by 2031. This compares to per-capita carbon dioxide emission rates of 20.01 tonnes in the United States and 9.40 tonnes in the European Union (EU) in 2004, thus the pledge is unlikely to require India to make any significant adjustments to its development strategy at all. The carbon intensity cut is more substantive, although modest compared to China's pledge to reduce carbon intensity by 45% from 2005 levels by 2020. However, unlike the per-capita emissions pledge, the Indian government will have to successfully implement new policy initiatives to achieve it.

These new policy initiatives are contained within India's National Action Plan on Climate Change, which consists of eight grandly named "National Missions". Two of them, the National Solar Mission and the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency, are particularly important to reaching the CO2 intensity target. Reducing emissions from the industrial sector, which make up nearly 31% of total CO2 emissions from the country as a whole, will be crucial. In the power sector the government is hoping to bring down emissions by increasing the amount of solar energy in the overall generation mix and has set a target of generating 20,000MW of on-grid solar power and 2,000MW of off-grid solar power by 2020. However, there are significant hurdles to the plan including technical challenges relating to ensuring optimal generation processes for solar power and concerns over how the government will fund subsidies needed for solar power tariffs (see India: 20 November 2009: Government Gives Green Light to Indian Solar Mission Plan). The National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency is another key pillar of the government's plan. India’s rapidly growing gas production capabilities, now estimated at around 140 mmcm/d following the start-up of Reliance Industries’ KG-D6 gas block, will help the government to start shifting its energy mix towards less carbon-intensive resources. Indeed, for the equivalent amount of heat, natural gas produces about 30% less CO2 than burning petroleum and 45% less CO2 than burning coal, the largest single contributor to India's energy mix. As part of the 12th Five Year Plan, the government has stated that an additional 10,000MW of the least efficient operating power plants will be retired or reconditioned and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency estimates that the energy saving potential for a large number of power plants is between 5% and 15%. It has pledged to give many of these units energy efficiency targets by end-2010. However, the government states in its policy that it is relying heavily on multilateral funding to manage significant incremental investment and economic costs under the energy efficiency programme, suggesting that a failure to receive adequate funding at Copenhagen could significantly undermine attempts to reach the target. Cross-cutting and sector-specific technological options, which the government hopes will help reduce emissions, are also heavily contingent on firming up a technology transfer agreement at Copenhagen, which is not guaranteed due to concerns among some developed countries over intellectual property rights.

Outlook and Implications

While the 20-25% cut is far less ambitious than China's pledge to reduce carbon intensity by 45% from 2005 levels by 2020, it does look like an achievable target, even in a country where co-ordination between the range of government departments required to implement the plan is often sorely lacking. Monitoring progress of the plan will require further development of methods to measure emissions reductions, as many companies in India do not currently do this. However, the country’s National Action Plan emphasises that the government could do much more with greater financial assistance and technological support from the international community and Ramesh has indicated that India may be prepared to accept more ambitious targets if a successful and equitable agreement is reached in Copenhagen. India's announcing of the target, just days before the start of the conference, signals that it seeks to use it as a negotiating chip, a way for the country to demonstrate to developed nations that it is prepared to take action on CO2 emissions providing it receives financial assistance and transfer of key technologies, thereby placing the onus on developing countries to help India to do more. With more of its demands met, India would likely settle for a more ambitious carbon intensity target, although the government has clearly stated that absolute carbon emissions cuts are virtually non-negotiable.

While developed countries might be perturbed at the obstinacy of India, widely believed to soon become the world's third-largest CO2 emitter, they would do well to support its policy initiatives at Copenhagen to persuade the government to become more active. India's projected growth in absolute CO2 emissions, which are estimated to rise from around 1.2 billion tonnes to between 4 and 7 billion tonnes by 2030 as a result of rapid population expansion and a build-up in industrial capacity, could make the costs in ten years, of setting India on a more sustainable and environmentally friendly growth path, even higher.