India's Low Carbon Growth Strategies Report Shies Away from Demanding Aggressive Climate Action

This week, the Planning Commission of India released a long-awaited interim report of a government-appointed expert panel on low carbon strategies for inclusive growth. The report indicates that with aggressive action, including new policies and technologies, India can achieve both 8% economic growth through the year 2020, as well as a reduction of emissions intensity by nearly 35%. This is consistent with the Indian government’s commitment to incorporating climate mitigation into its economic growth model. Unfortunately, the report falls short of advocating for the most aggressive scenario and increased action by the government to achieve the maximum reduction.

The panel, chaired by former Planning Commission Member Dr. Kirit Parikh, was constituted in January 2010 by the Prime Minister’s Office to study how India could meet its Copenhagen commitments. Its findings are supposed to inform the Planning Commission as it develops and finalizes India’s Twelfth Plan (2012-2017). The interim report considers both an 8% GDP growth rate for India as well as 9% GDP growth rate until 2020, and within each scenario looks at what can be achieved on a sectoral basis through “determined” measures (vigorous and effective implementation of policies that are already in place or current being contemplated by the government) and “aggressive” measures (implementation of current policies plus design and implementation of new policies, along with significant deployment of new technologies and increased innovation) . In these scenarios, the projections for emissions intensity reductions by 2020, over a 2005 baseline, vary from as low as 23.88% (9% growth rate and determined effort) to 34.40% (8% growth rate and aggressive effort). 

The report gives a great deal of attention to reaffirming India’s position about its low historic contribution to climate change, its low per capita emissions, its relatively low rate of growth of emissions in comparison to the United States, China and the EU, and underscores that India’s commitments at Cancun are strictly voluntary. It declares that “India has already achieved commendable emission intensity reductions since the early 1990s”, with a 24.9% reduction in emissions intensity of GDP between 1994 and 2007. Chapter one of the report is thus  very careful to stick to India’s international negotiating position on climate change, and does not offer any surprises.

The report recommends various sectoral strategies for reducing emissions intensity, keeping in mind the 8-9% growth scenarios through 2020. It is curious however, that for some sub-sectors like appliance energy efficiency and buildings energy efficiency it clearly identifies two separate approaches (determined and aggressive), but for others it lists possible policy measures but does not distinguish whether a given approach would be considered determined or aggressive. It will be useful if the final report remedies this inconsistency.

Some highlights of the sectoral recommendations are:

• POWER: Appliance energy efficiency (determined effort: 70% of all appliances in 2020 to be highly energy efficient; aggressive effort: 65% of all appliances in 2020 to be super efficient and 25% highly efficient);supply side enhancement and efficiency (super critical thermal power plants, integrated coal gasification combined cycles plants, carbon capture and sequestration, natural gas, limited growth in hydro power, high growth in wind power, rapid and significant growth in solar power and nuclear power).
• TRANSPORT: “Avoid-shift-improve paradigm”, including increasing the share of rail in freight transport (completion of freight corridor already underway); increasing or retaining current modal shares of public and non-motorized transport in urban passenger transport; improving fuel efficiency of current vehicle fleet and its operation (labeling, defining minimum fuel efficiency standard, periodically tightening corporate fleet fuel efficiency standards, up-front tax on personal vehicles, equal pricing for petrol and diesel to get rid of price distortions and allow consumers to choose more efficient option).
• INDUSTRY: Improved efficiency in the iron and steel sector (through blast furnace-basic oxygen furnaces, electric arc furnaces and induction furnaces, coke dry quenching, cold rolling, slab casting, corex and finex smelting and pulverized coal injections); improved efficiency in the cement sector (increase in blending percentage, fuel substitution through usage of waste materials, cogeneration); improved efficiency in the oil and gas sector (reduction of gas flaring, and reduction of waste in processing and transportation).
• BUILDINGS: Improved efficiency in residential buildings (primarily through appliances like efficient ceiling fans and redesigning buildings to reduce heating and air conditioning load); improved efficiency in commercial buildings (design efficiency and daylighting, insulation, plugging of leaks, use of natural ventilation, better implementation of the currently voluntary Energy Conservation Buildings Code (ECBC)and other green ratings systems like GRIHA and LEED India). In the buildings sector, the report distinguishes what can be accomplished through a determined effort (10% of new buildings to be built by 2020 to surpass ECBC and save 50% energy from current baseline, 10% of new buildings to meet ECBC requirements and save 70% energy from current baseline, and 10% of existing buildings and 30% of new buildings will have energy performance comparable to a retrofitted building and save 18% energy from current baselines) and an aggressive effort (15% of new buildings to surpass ECBC and save 50% energy from current baseline, 35% of new buildings to meet ECBC requirements and save 70% energy from current baseline, and 20% of existing buildings and 50% of new buildings will have energy performance comparable to a retrofitted building and save 18% energy from current baseline).
• FORESTRY: Effective implementation of the National Mission for a Green India (double the area for afforestation by 2020 and raise total forested area to 20 million hectares (ha), enhance resilience of current forest areas, increase greenhouse gas (GHG) removal by India’s forests to 6.35% of India’s annual GHG emissions, restore 4 million ha of degraded forests, restore 2 million ha of scrub forests, restore 0.20 million ha of mangroves, restore 0.10 million ha of wetlands, create critical wildlife corridors etc.).

On the one hand, the report is a positive sign that India is committed to addressing climate change and will factor in climate change in its pursuit of rapid economic growth. However, it disappoints on several counts, and has come in for criticism by several environmental groups. For instance, it is unequivocal that coal-based generating capacity needs to increase by 230 gigawatts (GW) by 2020 to “ensure energy security”, instead of emphasizing a shift away from coal and towards renewables. It also indicates that the gains from efficiency in residential buildings would be negligible, and thus does not make a detailed analysis of this sub-sector, even though there is potential for gains here. Instead of underscoring the urgency of taking the most aggressive mitigation actions, the report concludes by stating that if India has to sustain 8-9% GDP growth through 2020, despite improvements in energy intensity, the total GHG emissions will be at least double the absolute levels in 2007, and that this carbon space must be made available to India to achieve inclusive growth and eliminate poverty. But perhaps the biggest shortcoming is that the report fails to address the deleterious impacts of climate change on India’s GDP and economic growth (including food insecurity, extreme weather events and health impacts), and lacks a robust calculation of how the goal of inclusive growth will be hampered by climate change (such as the Stern Report model).  We hope that the final report, expected in January 2012, will incorporate such crucial calculations, and demand aggressive action.