India will prioritize a gradual transition to cleaner fuels and lower household consumption to achieve net zero emissions by 2070, according to a national report released on Monday at the United Nations COP27 climate summit in Egypt. The report outlines for the first time how the world’s second-largest coal consumer will meet its 2021 decarbonisation pledge as part of an international effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.
“This is an important milestone,” India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said at the COP27 event to launch the report. “Once again, India has proven that it talks the talk on climate change.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not attend this year’s climate talks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, all countries are required to submit a strategy document to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that shows how they will help fight global warming. These plans are known as Long-Term Low Emissions and Development Strategies (LT-LEDS).
Despite the 2020 deadline for plans, only 56 countries have submitted it so far. India is the last of the world’s five largest economies to do so. India’s LT-LEDS targets six key areas to reduce net emissions, including electricity, urbanisation, transport, forests, finance and industry. For example, the country proposes to increase the use of biofuels – especially blending ethanol into gasoline – by increasing the number of electric vehicles on the road, along with expanded public transport networks and the use of more green hydrogen fuel.
India has already committed to phase out coal use along with other countries and has become a large market for renewable energy projects such as solar power. What is new in India’s strategy, said Taryn Fransen, an international expert on climate change policy at the non-profit World Resources Institute in the United States, is the focus on reducing consumption at the individual or household level, as well as the inclusion of carbon capture. , use and storage (CCUS).
This includes technology that can capture carbon from polluting industries so it never enters the atmosphere. Environmentalists have warned against using it in a way that extends the life of coal-fired power plants. “There’s a lot of uncertainty around that, but at the same time research from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests we’re going to need a lot of CO2 removal,” Fransen told. India has said it will work to develop the technologies used in the CCUS.
Unlike Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are also mandated under the Paris Agreement, LT-LEDS focus on a longer time horizon and do not require countries to report progress. India updated its NDC in August, committing it to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% from 2005 levels over the next 7 years – an increase of 10 percentage points from the previous 2016 commitment. While India’s LT-LEDS has set out an ambitious green transition strategy, Yadav said the country cannot “have a situation where the energy security of developing countries is ignored in the name of urgent mitigation”.
India and other developing countries have long resisted calls for a rapid shift away from fossil fuels, which could undermine their economic growth and impose heavy costs. “India has to pay for a crisis it didn’t cause with money it doesn’t have,” said Dipa Singh Bagai, head of the Natural Resources Defense Council of India. India wants countries to agree to phase out all fossil fuels at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, rather than a narrower deal to phase out coal as agreed last year, two sources familiar with the talks said.
