Renewables efforts noted

India could have been expected to increase its coal-fired power use for decades, but it has now intensified focus on renewables, notes Climate Action Tracker (CAT).

There appears to be a transition underway with an extremely rapid growth in renewable energy installations, which has begun to displace planned coal at a scale that has surprised many analysts.

Yet India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement (PA) does not yet reflect these developments, notes CAT in India’s climate action assessment, rating it as “medium”.

With the currently targeted 175 GW of renewable power capacity to be reached by 2022, India is already set to overachieve its emissions intensity target.

The likely continued expansion of renewables after 2022, for which no targets have yet been set, would result in India also overshooting its 2030 non-fossil capacity target.

Thus, India’s Paris Agreement NDC commitment is weaker than actions resulting from current policies. On 2 October 2016, India ratified the Paris Agreement.

Neither the NDC nor current policies are ambitious enough to limit warming to below 2°C, let alone the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit, unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort.

India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets to lower the emissions intensity of GDP by 33% to 35% by 2030 below 2005 levels, to increase the share of non-fossil based power generation capacity to 40% of installed electric power capacity by 2030 (equivalent to 26–30% of generation in 2030), and to create an additional (cumulative) carbon sink of 2.5–3 GtCO2e through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
For 2020, India has earlier put forward a pledge to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 20% to 25% by 2020 below 2005 levels. Both the NDC and Copenhagen pledge are in line with current policies and we rate them as “medium.”

The “medium” rating indicates that India’s climate plans are at the least ambitious end of what would be a fair contribution. This means they are not consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit, unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort.

Read full report: http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/india.html

/fii-news.com