Paris Agreement proved to be the first-ever universal, legally binding agreement to be further signed by 195 countries under United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and register a bigger step in limiting Climate change.
The parties consented and set targets to limit global warming to well below 2 degree Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels and endure to achieve 1.5 degrees Celsius.
However, its advent had been boosting morale more than the actual work done by its member countries. And there have been several threatening disclosures on the initially-set and actually-achieved targets.
UNEP’s “Emissions gap report” has calculated that even in case emissions fall by 7.6% every year, the world will fail to meet the agreement’s target of 1.5º C temperature.
According to IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5˚C, 2050 is the year most of the world’s countries will reign in their emissions completely but in case the world does it by 2040, probability of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C will be more realistic.
India appeared to be on track for these commitments but repeated bolts of pandemic strains, economic slowdown, security threats, internal disturbances like vaccine and oxygen shortage etc. seem to have derailed our savoring attempts.
Where does India stand now?
India set one of the most ambitious and motivating voluntary targets of installing renewable power, creating new carbon sinks and curbing emissions.
The government of India aimed to install 175 GW of renewable power by 2022 including 100 GW of solar power, the rest to come from wind (60 GW), bio-power (10 GW) and small hydropower (5 GW).
International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) Global Renewables Outlook 2020 report states that the share of renewable energy in modern-era energy supply could go up to 66 percent by 2050.
Hence, India’s PM Narendra Modi is even eyeing to enhance the installed capacity of renewable energy to 450 GW by 2030.
Also the government had announced a target in 2015 to deploy 100 GW solar power, 40 GW were to come from rooftop solar. So far, the growth in rooftop solar sector has been stagnant and is less than 10 GW.
India’s current installed renewable energy capacity (till April ‘21) is about 95 GW including 40.5 GW of solar power.
Apprehensions and doubts about India achieving its goals:
CRISIL Ltd. 2019 paper cited a shortfall by about 42 percent in India’s target for 2022 and claimed that it will likely miss the target.
It dared to note several regulatory challenges and policy flip-flops in addition to a record-low renewable power tariffs for the shortfall.
It revealed that 26 percent of the 64 GW renewable energy projects auctioned by the central as well as state governments, have received either none or moderate bids, while the remnant 31 percent face delays in allocation even after being tendered.
According to CRISIL: “The unstable policy environment poses big risks for the renewable energy targets. This is evident in the growing incoherence between the policy thrust on the one hand, and the actual action by implementation agencies on the other”.
Prof. NH Ravindranath of Centre for Sustainable Technologies – IISc, Bangalore, in another undertaking has suggested a 3-point roadmap to help India achieve at least 50 per cent of its NDC target under the Paris Agreement.
According to climate action tracker’s (a cross-national body assessing climate performances) analysis of India’s current policy, India is only 2 degree compatible. This means its actions are not compliant to curb enough emissions to limit global temperature to 1.5
They explain: “India can achieve its NDC target with currently implemented policies. We project the share of non-fossil power generation capacity will reach 60–65% in 2030, corresponding to a 40–43% share of electricity generation”.
“India’s emissions intensity (excluding the agriculture sector) in 2030 will be 37-39% below 2005 levels. Thus, under current policies, India is likely to achieve both its 40% non-fossil target and its emissions intensity target.”
Bridge to India (BTI), a renewable power consultancy has expressed the same concern: “According to our estimates, before COVID-19, India was expected to achieve a total installed capacity of about 122 GW by the end of 2022 including biomass and small hydro. But the picture has changed after COVID-19 and we estimate India to achieve only about 110 GW by the end of the next year,” in an interview to Mongabay-India.
“We simply don’t have the execution capacity required to scale up annual capacity addition to 25-30 GW. There are a lot of factors involved – land, transmission, grid robustness etc. Moreover, where is the demand for such an amount of power?”
But a few are still hopeful of India’s resurgence in controlling emissions.
Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) asserts: “Keeping in view the progress made before COVID-19 and with the process of installations halted during it, it seems difficult for India to achieve such a target.”
“That being said, there is still a lot of capacity that is in the pipeline or tendered, so even if we won’t achieve 175 GW of renewable energy, we will make significant progress towards it by 2022.”
What is Government and MNRE’s stand over this?
The government of India stands confident of achieving the target destined for 2022. Indian government’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) march 2021 statement claimed “projects of 49.7 GW capacity are at various stages of implementation and projects of 25.91 GW are under various stages of bidding.”
Several environmental and social conflicts in rehabilitation, high interest rates on financing the sector reforms, heavy import dependence for solar modules and photovoltaics, lesser incentives to renewable energy promoting organizations and start-ups etc. and Covid have been the ailments to India’s renewable energy sector.
Its high time we root-out all of them to stay relevant to the targets at hand.