INDC – The Wire

Developed World Sabotages UN Climate Summit, Now Declared a Failure

The developed world – led by the US – blocked any attempt at a compromise using a ‘take it or leave it approach’.

Kabir Agarwal from The Wire is in Madrid, Spain, to cover COP25. Follow our coverage of this important event here.

Madrid/New Delhi: On Saturday evening, as COP25 pushed 24 hours beyond its planned deadline, the global climate action group Extinction Rebellion delivered what it said was a mass of “Madrid’s finest horse manure” outside the venue, exclaiming “what a pile of shite that was”. Their jibe was directed at the suits inside the venue who had been unable to agree on much-needed climate action to help the world, especially the developing world, deal with the effects of global heating.

COP25 has been the longest running COP in the events’ 25-year history. It finally wound up at 6:30 pm IST on Sunday.

The countries party to the Paris Agreement failed to agree on rules and procedures to govern a global carbon market, on finance for losses caused by extreme weather events, on meeting the commitments made before the agreement and on raising their ambitions.

Antonio Guterres, the UN security general, offered a candid summary: “I am disappointed with the results of COP25. The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”

That the developed and the developing worlds had opposite views on each of these was clear from the beginning of COP25, but the divergence only grew over the course of two weeks as the developed world – led by the US – blocked any attempt at a compromise using a ‘take it or leave it approach’.

“They refused to [cede] even an inch,” one diplomat from a developing country said. “They refused to recognise the importance of finance for loss and damage, the raising of finance for adaptation, the significance of meeting pre-2020 goals from an equity standpoint. I am afraid we have moved away from the core principle of common but differentiated responsibilities enshrined in the Paris Agreement.”

Common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) recognises the importance of all countries doing their bit to both adapt to and mitigate global warming – but how much they ought to do is to be be decided by accounting the stage of development each country is at, their vulnerability to the climate crisis and their responsibility in causing it. This principle is mentioned in the preamble of the Paris Agreement as one of its guiding forces.

At COP25, the developed world didn’t honour CBDR, instead pushing back against any decision, often with strong language, on the provision of finance to developing countries to help them mitigate, adapt and deal with losses due to climate change.

It also blocked any commitments to meet its emissions reductions under the Kyoto Protocol, the outgoing climate regime to be replaced by the Paris Agreement next year.

The developing countries, led by India, had put their foot down for the duration of COP25, arguing that not honouring pre-2020 commitments would mean that the burden of meeting the resulting emission gaps would fall on developing countries under the Paris Agreement, which in turn would violate CBDR.

This issue will now come up for debate again next year – but until then, precious time that could have been spent taking measures to deal with climate change will be lost.

The framing of rules and procedures for carbon markets (under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement), the only leftover piece of the Paris Agreement rulebook, has also been pushed to next year’s COP summit in Glasgow.

On Friday, Costa Rica’s environment minister, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, pinned the blame on Australia, Brazil and the US for stalling progress on carbon markets: “Some of their positions are totally unacceptable because they are inconsistent with the commitment and the spirit that we were able to agree upon in Paris in 2015.”

Brazil has been keen to institute double-counting: a way to measure emissions reduction whereby if country A reduces its emissions by X, earns carbon credits for X, sells that to country B, allowing B to pollute X amount, both A and B will be considered to cut their emissions by X each.

Developed countries also refused to relent on the question losses suffered by developing countries due to climate impact. The text merely”‘urges” developed countries to scale their support up to developing countries, instead of demanding that they do so.

The US resisted this change the most. Moreover, since the US – the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases – is also leaving the Paris Agreement next year, its government apparently wants to ensure it isn’t at all liable for any loss/damages due to climatic causes.

American negotiators also demanded that the Warsaw International Mechanism, through which finance for loss and damage enters the system, be governed by the body responsible for the Paris Agreement and not by the body that governs the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change.

But they didn’t quite have their way as this decision has also been pushed to next year, when the US won’t be present at the table. However, they did manage to block any significant financial commitments.

“We have seen floods in Mozambique and Malawi, droughts in Senegal and the Gambia, and flooding in Bangladesh and Nepal,” Sonam Wangdi, the chair of the least developed countries group and a member of the Bhutan delegation, said in a statement. “Scientists say it is only going to get worse. More climate action and support is urgently needed, not less. But some countries seem to be working to limit their obligations under the convention and the Paris Agreement.”

Kabir Agarwal is in Madrid at the invitation of the Global Editors Network to cover COP25.

Govt Plans to Increase Height of Solar Panels so Farming Can Continue Below

If India is to generate 100 GW of solar power by 2022, it is only a matter of time before agricultural land also goes under.

The biggest victim of India’s solar revolution has been land – especially hundreds of acres in arid and semi-arid regions. When a large solar park is set up, a vast patch of land goes under the solar panels. The Government of India has maintained that most such land is barren and unfit for farming. However, if India is to generate 100 GW of solar power by 2022, it is only a matter of time before agricultural land also goes under.

Recently, officials of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) said they’re working on a workaround. “We are actively working on a policy to ensure that will give solar companies an option to have legal agreements with farmers wherein farming can continue if the height of the panels are increased,” Gopal Krishna Gupta, joint secretary at the MNRE, told The Wire at the India Pavilion at the recently concluded COP24 in Katowice, Poland. “We are simply giving [solar companies] an additional opportunity.”

It’s unknown if private companies are willing to take on the extra cost. Gupta added that the discussions were nearing their close, and that “we can expect it very shortly”.

Also read: The Paradox of Expanding Solar Parks

Each megawatt of electricity from solar parks requires 5-7 acres of land on average. With an installed capacity of 24 GW, nearly 500 sq. km of land now lies in the shadow of solar panels. By 2022, India has to install 75 GW more to meet its target – that’s 1,500-2,000 sq. km more.

“Now we are thinking of increasing the lease to Rs 30,000 per acre. Going forward, we will only lease the land and not acquire it,” Gupta said. “The farmers will continue to own the land. They can set up solar parks or tie up with developers.”

The MNRE’s job in this setup will be to “ensure that farmers are not fleeced by anyone”.

Upendra Tripathy, director-general of the International Solar Alliance, pointed to Rwanda as an example. “Here, the farmer is allowed to grow fodder under the panels and is paid for the cleaning services. The locals are also paid to bring water and clean the panels,” he said.

Some interventions remain necessary, but they only highlight the need for community participation further. “The panels are installed at a height and automatically become flat if the wind gets too strong,” Tripathy added. “There is an agreement between the solar park authorities and the local community that operations inside the park will be fully labour-oriented.”

Also read: Can India’s Solar Revolution Help Meet Its Paris Agreement Emission Goals?

Increasing the height of solar installations also presents an economic challenge. “In the Sunderbans, women grow tubers like turmeric and ginger on the side of the panel, where the water drips. We need more research on whether this kind of farming is scalable,” Tripathy explained. “While fodder can be grown and cut under panels, allowing for grazing might be dangerous for the animals.”

Activists have taken the line that, ultimately, the community’s needs should be prioritised. “Commons like water and grazing area should not be diverted. When there is a drought, these are critical access points” the community to sate its needs, Leo Saldanha of the Environment Support Group, Bengaluru, said. “There are no shortcuts to this problem and merely increasing the height is not going to solve it.”

It’s just one cog in a bigger machine, but a cog nonetheless.

This story was supported by the 2018 Climate Change Media Partnership, a collaboration between Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Foundation.

Karthikeyan Hemalatha is a freelance journalist based in Bangalore. He covers issues relating to the environment, climate change, agriculture and marine ecology.

If India’s Power Sector Goes Coal All the Way, Then Disaster Awaits

If India builds all its proposed coal-based power plants, then it might not fulfil its promise made under the Paris climate agreement.

India seems to be headed towards a collision between its energy development ambitions and climate goals.

Credit: SD-Pictures/pixabay

If India builds all its proposed coal-based power plants, then it might not fulfil its promise made under the Paris climate agreement, a recent study conducted by University of California, Irvine (UCI), and CoalSwarm, a coal-tracking portal, has found.

To this day, 144 nations have signed the Paris climate agreement and it came into effect in November 2016. It aims to limit global temperature rise to under 2° C above what it was between 1850 and 1890 by the end of this century. A more ambitious target, of limiting the rise to under 1.5°C , doesn’t look likely anymore.

Each signatory to the agreement has had to declare its actions and goals to meet the terms through the so-called intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs). These actions include a slew of measures to bring down the emission of greenhouse gases – especially carbon dioxide – that warm the globe and drastically alter the climate.

As part of its INDC, India aims to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of GDP by 35% of the amount emitted in 2005. The country is currently the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and its largely-coal-based energy sector contributes two-thirds of those emissions.

Moreover, coal based power plants emit 41% of all carbon dioxide released by human activities, making them the largest carbon dioxide emitters on Earth. At the same time, India also needs this energy to build its infrastructure and improve its citizens’ standard of living.

According to the study, published in the journal Earth’s Future on April 25, India has planned 370 coal-based power plants to be switched on by 2025 or sooner. They have a collective capacity of 243 GW. While 65 GW’s worth of them are under construction, 178 GW are still in the planning stage.

If the 2º C threshold agreed upon at Paris is breached, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that those already living in poverty will be ‘most vulnerable’ to these changes. India is home to a globally significant fraction of these people.

And all of this is assuming ‘2º C’ is some kind of lakshman rekha holding calamity at bay – which is not the case because the threshold is not entirely scientific and said calamity could ensue much before the planet warms by that much (on average). Moreover, according to Nagraj Adve, an expert on global warming, the planet’s already on course to warming by 1.7º C.

Steven Davis, an associate professor at UCI and coauthor of the study, said in a statement that India’s dilemma was “of its own making”, and adding, “The country has vowed to curtail its use of fossil fuels in electricity generation but it has also put itself on a path to building hundreds of coal-burning power plants to feed its growing industrial economy.”

The study estimates that if all the proposed plants are built, India will have 123% more power generated from coal than it does today. Next, if it also meets 40% of the country’s power demand from renewable sources of energy, then India will be officially producing more power than it needs. As a result, many power plants will have to sit idle, precipitating financial losses and wasted resources. The researchers peg these losses at Rs 1.2-15.37 lakh crore (depending on the capacity at which the plants run). According to their paper, 30 GW’s worth of coal plants had already been stranded due to lack of demand in June 2016.

While agreeing with the broad points that the study makes, Adve isn’t sure about the underlying assumptions. “The fact that India has proposed 178 GW [of coal plants] does not mean they will necessarily be built,” he told The Wire. He also pointed out that India has made tall claims of expanding nuclear energy’s share in power generation in its INDC but that it will not be able to realise them.

In the same statement, Christine Shearer, a senior researcher at CoalSwarm, said that the proposed coal plants are “already incompatible” with India’s INDC and “simply unneeded”. Her group found that if power demand in the country grew by 7%, in line with the government’s projections, and the plants run 65% of the time, then India will not meet its goals. If it wants to, then power demand growth will have to be kept to 6% and the plants, running at 75%.

Adve questioned such conclusions: “India’s commitments are not very ambitious, and it has already reduced its emissions intensity by 12%.” He believed that India should be able “to meet its target without much exertion” because more efficient energy technologies will arise in modernising economies. He also advised against putting the onus solely on India “given the levels of coal production and use in US and China”.

The use of high-quality coal and cutting-edge technology can make those power plants that are already in use more efficient and help cut their emissions. Currently, only 4% of the proposed plants are equipped to operate at high efficiencies, consume less fuel and emit less carbon dioxide. The rest are either super-critical or subcritical plants.

India Hopeful of Imminent Membership in Missile Technology Control Regime

The Dutch chair of the MTCR has written to all member states asking them to approve Indian membership ‘by circulation’.

File photo of the BrahMos missile, a joint India-Russia venture. The range of the missile, at 290 km, has been kept under 300 km so that future exports from India would not fall foul of the MTCR guidelines. Credit: PTI

New Delhi: Instead of waiting a few more months for the plenary of the group in South Korea later this year, the United States is trying to get all 34 members of the Missile Technology Control Regime to sign off on India’s entry in advance.

India committed to abide by the export guidelines of the MTCR in 2008 as part of the civilian nuclear deal with the US and formally applied for membership to the export control regime for missiles last June. Its case was “thoroughly discussed” at the group’s plenary meeting at Rotterdam on October 9, 2015. But, in the absence of consensus, India had to wait a little longer. The main hold-out was Italy, which implicitly linked India’s membership to the case of the two Italian marines which was under international arbitration based on Rome’s demand that India return the men accused of killing two fishermen off the coast of Kerala in 2012.

In normal course, India’s membership would have come up again during the MTCR’s next plenary to be held in South Korea. But clearly both India and the US are in a hurry to wrap up the MTCR – so that a successful application would provide momentum to India’s campaign to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The NSG will be meeting later this month, also in South Korea.

To speed up the process, the Netherlands – which holds the MTCR chair till the next plenary – has, with the active encouragement of the United States, written to all member countries to approve India’s membership “by circulation”, Indian officials told The Wire. The officials, who have their fingers crossed, are hoping the process will be completed very soon.

According a PTI report from Washington, which quoted sources “tracking the development”, Indian membership of the MTCR could come within this week – with a possible announcement during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US on June 6-7.

The move comes less than a week after India adhered voluntarily to the Hague Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation, which ‘complements’ the binding MTCR regime. India had earlier held out against joining the HCoC for years – it abstained on a resolution on the HCoC at the UN as recently as December 2014 – but appears to have calculated that putting the right foot forward was crucial to get into the MTCR.

Italy appears to have removed its virtual veto after the second Italian marine returned home on May 30 following the Indian government’s decision to not object when the matter came up before the Supreme Court. The international arbitral tribunal in its order on May 3 had said that India and Italy “should cooperate” to allow for the Indian Supreme Court to relax bail conditions and allow Girone to go back to his country while the tribunal completes its trial.

What the MTCR does

The MTCR guidelines, drafted in 1987, enjoin member states to restrict the export of items that could assist the production of ballistic missiles and other unmanned delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. For the most sensitive items, also known as ‘Category I’ – complete missile systems capable of carrying a payload of at least 500 kgs over a distance of more than 300 km, and drones or components designed exclusively for use in such systems – the MTCR encourages member states to deny export licenses altogether, subject to national law. The US, for example, permits certain exports but with tight restrictions on end-use. Category 2 items are largely dual use and include components that are needed for civilian space flight. Here, most MTCR states have a less restrictive policy.

Though the MTCR does not bar the sale of Category 1 or 2 items to non-members, India’s calculation is that membership of the club would make it easier to acquire critical components and even systems, especially for its space programme. The Indian military is also interested in purchasing US drones – a Category 1 item.

If India does get entry into MTCR, it will be first of the four export regimes that India aims to join in order to remove restrictions on high-technology trade. The United States had agreed in 2010 to actively support India’s membership for the four regimes as part of the India-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement.

Although the US has traditionally sought to impose tough conditions on new entrants into the MTCR, Indian officials say the country’s membership will come with no additional demands. “here are no conditions. We come in with our indigenous missile and space programmes as they are,” an Indian official told The Wire.

From MTCR to NSG?

The Nuclear Suppliers Group plenary will be held June 20-24, where the US and other supporters are expected to make a strong case for India, despite opposition from other countries like China. A pre-plenary special meeting is also going to be held in Vienna June 9-10 to have a preliminary airing on the issue of membership.

“Discussion within the NSG is still going on about the accession of non-NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) countries, and NSG members remain divided on this issue,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a written statement to PTI.

China, which has been lobbying for Pakistan to be a member too, insisted that the NSG was “part and parcel of the international non-proliferation regime” and therefore new members should sign the NPT

Dismissing this line of argument, foreign secretary S Jaishankar said on Friday that the NSG was a “flexible arrangement” between states, unlike a treaty like the NPT. “If you look at the central word in that acronym NSG, it is ‘supplier’. If you look [at the NPT], it is proliferation. So, I think the objectives are different and I would not really confuse apples for oranges,” he said.

Following the line taken by President Pranab Mukherjee in his discussions with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing last month, Jaishankar also linked India’s ability to implement the commitments submitted as INDC to its joining the NSG.

“We can say today that the INDC envisages that 40% of our power generation capacity by 2030 would be non-fossil fuel. If 40% is non-fossil fuel, obviously a substantial part of it would be nuclear,” he noted, adding that if there was uncertainty about technology access, then investments by big international players were not likely to happen.

“The merits of our joining the NSG derive from the fact that we have a substantial expansion of our nuclear energy segment ahead of us… I mean if there are norms and practices in the world, proliferation is not an irrelevant concern to it. It is not the same. People look at us. I think we have a very solid record with which much of the world is comfortable,” added the foreign secretary.

India’s Only Hope of Squaring the Climate Change Circle is to Step on the Gas

If India has to depend on fossil fuels for its energy requirements, at least in the short to medium term, natural gas is by far the cleanest option.

Power grid. Credit: Ram Joshi/Flickr CC 2.0

Now that the euphoria over the Paris climate agreement has settled down, India, like other developing countries, will have to face up to the reality of a restricted carbon space available to deliver on the ambitious promise of development to her people. Service-sector-led growth has been flogged to saturation and the new emphasis on ‘Make in India’ will require us to consume greater quantities of energy even if we adopt efficient technologies.

India’s Intended Nationally Determined Commitments (INDC) submitted to the UNFCCC is a glib and somewhat self-congratulatory document. Nevertheless, it makes certain key commitments to the international community. Fulfilling these commitments will require us to make a paradigm shift in the way we produce and consume energy.

Therefore, the first task would be to review our energy basket and shuffle it a bit. Electricity is the cleanest and most convenient form of energy, but the way it is generated is often dirty. The dirtiest of all – coal-based electricity generation – should be the primary target of our fight against global warming. At present, coal constitutes a little over 60% of our installed power generation capacity, but for various reasons, in terms of actual units generated, coal usually accounts for well over 80% of all the electricity consumed in the country. So, reducing the share of coal and using it in a more responsible manner has to be our first priority, notwithstanding our public posturing in this regard. The responsible use of coal would mean extracting higher efficiencies through the adoption of supercritical, ultra-supercritical and other technologies. About 144 old thermal stations have been assigned mandatory targets for improving energy efficiency.

India’s INDC has committed that by 2030, 40% of our electricity would come from non-fossil fuel sources subject, of course, to funding and technology transfer from the international community. Even so, coal will account for a sizeable chunk of our power generation. International investors looking for business opportunities have zoned in on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as a technological manna for countries excessively reliant on coal. CCS involves separation of carbon dioxide from flue gas emitted by coal-fired power plants, compressing and transporting it by pipelines to exhausted hydrocarbon reservoirs or abandoned coal mines to be sealed and stored underground indefinitely. According to Vaclav Smil, the acclaimed international energy expert, the scale of the infrastructure required to compress and effectively sequester CO2 emissions would be so huge and expensive that it is simply not a viable option. Besides, it suffers from the ever-present risk of carbon leaking out of its storage in the future. Therefore, it is imperative that we move away from coal.

Our untapped hydroelectric generation potential is around 73 gigawatts, but not all of it can be exploited. Besides, even our existing hydel generation is far below its potential – dependent as it is, on the vagaries of the monsoon. It would be difficult to ramp up nuclear capacity by more than a few thousand megawatts on account of the huge costs, fuel issues and siting problems associated with nuclear plants.

Given the present levels of technology, that leaves us with two fuel options – renewables and natural gas. The government has launched the National Action Plan on Climate Change, which focuses on solar, wind etc. While solar does offer alluring possibilities, it alone can never meet India’s electricity requirements. Regardless of our commitments on renewables, it is unlikely that they will eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.

Gas is the way to go

If India has to depend on fossil fuels, natural gas is by far the cleanest option. It emits less than half the carbon emitted by coal when used in power generation. The other greenhouse gases like sulphur and nitrous oxides associated with natural gas are also negligible. It is also quite versatile, since it can be used in process industries as well as in transport. In the developed world, natural gas accounts for a quarter of electricity generation whereas in India, we have only about 10% of thermal power generation capacity in the form of combined cycle gas generation turbines (CCGT). Actual generation from CCGT is negligible though, on account of shortage of gas in the country. The promised cornucopia of gas from the KG basin never materialised for a variety of reasons and the existing gas-based power plants are stranded for want of fuel.

Yet, all is not lost. Gas is fungible. It can be brought through pipelines from the neighbourhood or from afar in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in cryogenic ships. Europe and Russia are linked through a welter of pipelines. China has built five stages of its West-East Pipeline system spanning tens of thousands of miles across to its eastern seaboard. India has been lagging behind in this regard. While the TAPI pipeline seems to be moving ahead, it has to cross many obstacles before it materialises. Preliminary studies are being conducted to explore the possibility of bringing an undersea pipeline from Iran, the world’s biggest gas giant. Undersea gas pipelines are not rocket science. They bring North African gas to Spain and Italy. Russian gas travels to Turkey and thence to Europe through several pipelines running through the Black Sea. With the lifting of decades-long sanctions, Iran is like Prometheus unbound, raring to go. While undersea pipelines are an expensive option, the current low gas prices can make them viable.

Natural gas prices worldwide are linked to crude prices. With crude prices at a historic low, it would be in India’s interest to quickly tie up long-term supplies of natural gas through pipelines where feasible and in the form of LNG. India has three functioning LNG terminals and a fourth one – the infamous Enron terminal in Dabhol which has been mothballed but can be commissioned with minimal effort and expense. Now is the time to build more LNG terminals to bring gas from other parts of the world. Gas is a much more abundant fuel than oil and many new LNG suppliers have sprung up in recent years in the Caribbean, in western Africa, Australia etc. India would do well to quickly set up more LNG terminals and sign long-term gas supply contracts incorporating a price-band.

Simultaneously, the domestic gas pipeline infrastructure has to be expanded. Without waiting for the market to come up with investments in gas infrastructure, the government must promote a national champion to roll-out the network and build the terminals, a model that has served other countries well.

Squatters on carbon space

While we embark upon these measures, we also need to rethink the concept of development. China has chosen and even succeeded in equating development with rapid urbanisation, energy-guzzling vertical growth, expansive high-tech infrastructure, privatised transport and glitzy malls etc. The Chinese model is neither feasible nor desirable for India. We must evolve our own development model, one that resists the seductions of an unsustainable energy-intensive lifestyle based on excesses.

But even as we do that, as our INDC rightly states, ensuring a modicum of decent living to our disadvantaged millions would entail GHG emissions of at least 4 tonnes per capita as against our current per capita emissions of 1.56 tonnes. But these statistics can be misleading. They are averages which help India’s affluent hide behind the country’s 300 million poor who emit next to nothing. Flaunting our low per capita emissions to demand a greater share of the remaining global carbon space may be useful in an international negotiating arena, but the government will have to ensure that the carbon space available to us is more equitably apportioned internally. After all, by its own admission in the INDC document, 304 million Indians do not have access to electricity. These Indians constitute a quarter of the global population without access to electricity. Will the government display the courage and the will to ensure that a sizeable capacity – if not all – of all new power plants will be earmarked to serve those who are not yet privileged to access this clean form of energy? Otherwise, the affluent Indians who already emit much more than their fair share of carbon will continue to hog the national carbon space.

Sudha Mahalingam is an independent energy consultant and former Member, Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board

India’s Climate Contribution Statement Passes The Diplomatic Test

The first step has been taken, but there are several key issues and hurdles that will come up before the Paris negotiations on climate change.

The first step has been taken, but there are several key issues and hurdles that will come up before the Paris negotiations on climate change

Smoke spewing traffic in an Indian city

On October 2, India put out its much awaited climate change policy document – Intended Nationally Determined Contribution or INDC, for the faithful – for the upcoming Paris meeting. The last of the large economies to do so, its statement was anxiously awaited globally to see whether India would step out of line with the emergent global political consensus on how to structure a global deal. It didn’t.

The consensus is that each country should put on the table emissions limitations (and other aspects such as adaptation, should it see fit) that its domestic political economy allows. While the collected INDCs of countries may not – almost certainly will not – be sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change, these INDCs are meant to be the first step in a longer-term virtuous cycle of trust building, leading to ever higher pledges. For this edifice to remain standing, it is important that each country’s contribution is, in fact, a good faith contribution.

The problem is, since each contribution is to be ‘nationally determined’ or shaped by domestic considerations, including political considerations, how is ‘good faith’ to be judged? The benchmarks are multiple and divergent. And indeed, the politics behind alternative numbers describing who should do how much is the reason why the climate negotiations have been stalled for 20 years.

In this context, India chose to demonstrate good faith in a few different ways. First, we said that the emissions per unit of GDP that we produce (emissions intensity) would decline by 33-35% from its 2005 level by 2030. By stating an intensity reduction number, India is making clear our total emissions will increase through 2030. Importantly, we are drawing a distinction between ourselves and our political allies and fellow large emerging economies – South Africa, Brazil and China – all of which have chosen to formulate their contribution in terms of some sort of emissions peak (China without specifying an emission level, but only a peaking year of 2030) after which their emissions would decline.

Why emission peak won’t work for India

Starting from a much lower base of emissions, and as a considerably poorer country, an emission peak formulation was clearly not possible for India. For example, India’s emissions per person are about a tenth of the US and four to five times less than that of China, South Africa and Brazil. Our GDP per capita is about half that of China and about a third that of South Africa and Brazil. Nonetheless, we are now the third largest emitter in total terms, and the case for why India’s emissions have to continue growing needed to be made.

Updated analysis of India’s INDC pledge. Credit: CPR

Consequently, India had to show that it was taking serious measures to limit, if not emissions, than the rate of growth of emissions. By this benchmark, the emissions intensity number is on the conservative side. For example, a recent survey of national emissions and energy modelling studies undertaken by the Centre for Policy Research, illustrated in the above figure, shows that the 33-35% number leads to an intensity that falls at the low end of “reference” scenarios (i.e. what will happen with existing policies) and the high end of “policy” scenarios ( i.e. what will happen with additional policy effort). This suggests that the target may correspond to relatively low levels of policy effort or even to the normal course of events.

If this was all, India’s INDC may have been judged more harshly. But the intensity number was buttressed by two further elements. First, and most headline grabbing, India pledged to increase the share of non-fossil fuel based electricity (i.e. solar, wind, biomass, nuclear and hydro) to 40% of total electric capacity, and to increase forest and tree cover considerably. Second, there is a long, 20-page section laying out India’s progress on climate change, which includes a mix of current policies, scaled up efforts and proposed new efforts. Each of these deserves a closer look.

The electricity number, in particular, requires unpacking. A 40% share of electricity from non-fossil sources is a 10% increase from current 30% share. But because the total system itself is rapidly growing, it amounts to a substantial number, with higher end assumptions leading to numbers on the order of our entire current electric system capacity. Curiously, the section on India’s progress also includes an even more ambitious target, of 175GW of renewable energy (only solar, wind and biomass) by the even earlier date of 2022. It is significant that this statement is in the section on progress rather than in the formal part of the INDC, and is further hedged by an explicit statement that India is not bound to any sector specific obligation. If fulfilled, the latter short-term number is likely to make the former number redundant. In other words, while it is likely hard to achieve the 2022 number, once achieved, it should be relatively easier to extend it to the 2030 target.

The problem of finance

In all likelihood, with the 175GW target having been unveiled somewhat hastily earlier this year, India could not back away from it, and have since added a relatively modest update for the INDC. If the 2022 175 GW target is not reached, the 2030 40% fossil-fuel free target still stands as a respectable goal. On the other hand, if we achieve the short term 2022 target, we will considerably overachieve the long-term 2030 target.

Also noteworthy for its sheer scope is the section on India’s progress. Embedded in the detail are a few potentially big-ticket changes, such as the planned dedicated rail freight corridor to shift away from road freight, which could avoid high carbon lock-in an important part of the economy. For the most part, however, this section is somewhat vague, and where specific, it lists existing initiatives rather than new ones. But it is the framing of the section that is worth comment: if this section is to be believed, from here onwards India will include a climate perspective on a huge portion of the economy, including energy, transport, water, forests, agriculture and so on. This is an implicit acknowledgement that, often, addressing climate change is closely linked to sensible stewardship of the local environment and resource base. Will a global pledge to take climate change seriously in these sectors provide a lever to actually take more seriously local environmental protection?

A final point that speaks directly to the politics of the INDC is the treatment of finance. Historically, India has hewed closely to the view that all mitigation action, in particular, has to be paid for by the international community and backed by technology and capacity building. Underlying this notion is the idea that we focus on development at home, and mitigation and adaptation are add-ons for which international support is needed. But if climate change cuts across a huge swathe of the economy, then we are using the concept of mainstreaming climate change, which conceptually runs against the idea that development and climate action are neatly separable.

Here, the INDC resorts to what amounts to creative ambiguity. By listing actions, the text implies that India will go ahead with all sorts of actions that have the effect of mitigating and adapting, using our own money. But it also says that “successful implementation” of the INDC (by which it means a subset of the actions that are singled out) are contingent on an “ambitious global agreement” that includes finance, technology, and capacity building. Contrary to some views that suggest India has hewn to the strict version of its traditional line, this fudge holds open the possibility of continuing to ask for funds – but it also allows for action under India’s own steam. In a sense, this only formalises the approach of the past few years, during which India demanded funds at negotiations, even while undertaking all sorts of actions at home under the National Action Plan on Climate Change. This creative ambiguity on finance is a key element of the good faith test that the international community will apply to India.

Ultimately, India walks a line in its INDC. Passing the test of good faith has certainly been helped by the prevailing international environment – the mood is one of building a virtuous cycle, for which it is necessary to focus on positive interpretations of any ambiguity. But as negotiations begin to pinch, the ambiguity could begin to be less constructive. In the coming two months before the Paris negotiations, there are a number of key issues that India will face with regard to how these INDCs are to be taken forward, assessed, reviewed and updated. And there is the bigger question of whether the edifice, to which India has added its brick, is sufficiently robust to actually accomplish the overarching task of addressing climate change. India’s INDC has passed the diplomatic test. Whether, as part of a larger structure populated by similar carefully parsed INDCs passes, it passes the substantive test, remains to be seen.

The writer is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi