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India to table 2030 climate action plan on Friday
Around 120 countries have submitted their INDCs including the United States and China, world’s biggest emitters.
India on Friday will declare its climate action plan for 2030 which is likely to put the country on the path of sustainable growth. India’s climate plan called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) comes a day after the deadline to submit the plan which would be part of climate agreement to be agreed in Paris this winter.
India’s INDCs will have carbon intensity target for the GDP. In addition, India will also declare its renewable energy target, energy efficiency goal and more on sustainable development if the developed nations provide money for building capacity to meet challenges of global warming and technology transfer.
The clean India plan, as the government wants to call it, will be released on October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, when the government will celebrate Swachh Bharat campaign.
The INDCs will also have a message from Gandhi saying that “earth has enough resources to meet people’s need, but will never have enough to satisfy people’s greed” and would seek the Paris climate treaty to be a “global architecture” based on climate justice and equity.
Around 120 countries have submitted their INDCs including the United States and China, world’s biggest emitters. While the US has announced an emission cut of 26-28% of its 2005 level by 2030, China has announced that its emissions will be the maximum by 2030. Countries like South Africa and Brazil have announced ambitious INDCs before India.
Indian INDCs are expected to focus on the renewable energy front where the government is likely to state that green power including nuclear and hydro will contribute about 40-45% of country’s electricity mix by 2030, sources said. About half of the green power is expected to come from solar and wind similar to what China had committed by 2030.
It will mean that India’s installed capacity of renewable by 2030 would be 393 Gigawatts, more than double of what Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of 175 GW for 2022.
Sources say India is likely to voluntarily enhance its carbon intensity of the GDP but it would be lower than China’s pledge to reduce its emission intensity for GDP by 60-65% by 2030 to the 2005 level.
Before the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, India announced its carbon intensity reduction target of 20-25% by 2020 as compared to China’s emission intensity target of 40-45 for the same reference period. India is on track to meet the target.
Sources also said that India’s INDCs were “comprehensive” and will address all aspects of climate change --- adaption, mitigation, finance, technology transfer, capacity building and transparency in action.
The INDCs outlines steps taken by the government to meet India’s vulnerability to adverse impacts of climate change and will seek financial requirements from the developed work to meet the challenge. Sources said the INDCs will seek transfer of cost effective technologies and capacity building for adaption and mitigation.
Environment minister Prakash Javadekar had earlier sought mechanisms for technology transfer where the innovators are rewarded without compromising on climate change imperative. “The finance and technology mechanisms under the UN climate framework were not working in tandem. The cohesion needs to be found now so that by 2020 when a new agreement comes into force, the mechanisms work harmoniously for effective climate action,” he said.
The UN will bring out a synthesis report on the INDCs submitted by countries in the first week of November to show whether the countries’ voluntary commitments will take world to achieve the target of two degree Celsius rise in global temperature by end of this century.
