Relevance: GS-2: global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests./GS-3: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation.
Key phrases: Net-Zero Emissions, Gross-Zero Emissions, Conference of Parties (CoP), Global Warming and Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Emission Intensity, decarbonise energy, Green Hydrogen, transition to e-mobility.
Why in news?
- At COP-26, Prime Minister announced that India would achieve net zero by 2070, a declaration for the first time of becoming carbon neutral. Natural question arises is “Are these targets achievable? And if yes then can we prepone them?
Keypoints:
- The advanced economies of the US, Europe, and Japan had declared 2050 as the year for achieving net zero, and China by 2060. So, India’s 2070 target was fair and reasonable.
Net-zero, which is also referred to as carbon-neutrality, does not mean that a country would bring down its emissions to zero. That would be gross-zero, which means reaching a state where there are no emissions at all, a scenario hard to comprehend.
Therefore, net-zero is a state in which a country’s emissions are compensated by absorption
- However, Global warming must be restricted to 1.5 degrees as time is running out.
- This decade is critical for the future of humanity. COP-26 has, therefore, urged countries to increase their commitments for 2030 under the Paris Agreement.
India and its Climate targets:
- Speaking at the UN climate conference in Glasgow in November,
Prime Minister shortened the timeline on the country’s existing climate
targets, and announced a few new targets:
- Achieving net-zero emission status by 2070
- The emissions intensity reduction target has been raised to 45 per cent (from 2005 levels by the year 2030)
- India intended to fulfil 50 per cent of its energy requirement through renewable energy by 2030.
- Raising installed capacity of renewable energy: India would have 500 GW of non-fossil fuel-based energy capacity by the year 2030.
- An absolute reduction of 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030.
For 2030, India has been truly remarkable in raising its goals.
- Its Paris commitments were ambitious in seeking to achieve 40 per
cent of electricity generating capacity from renewables.
- Prime Minister in Glasgow increased the targets to 500 GW.
- Keeping in mind India’s total power capacity now is around 370 GW and renewables are just over 100 GW. Renewable capacity is to rise by 400 per cent in this decade.
Case Study: Solar potential in India
- Solar capacity from less than 1 GW a decade earlier is now set to cross 50 GW.
- This capacity has been created by private investment competitively through smart policies.
- Solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity when the sun shines.
- The storage cost of solar power has also been falling rapidly and recent bids of government’s SECI (Solar Electricity Corporation of India) indicate that the cost of solar power with storage is comparable, if not lower, than that from a new coal fired thermal plant.
- Growing demand in the future can be met from renewables as the least cost option.
- As the cost of storage declines further, the commercial logic of not creating new coal capacity would only become stronger.
- Further, decentralised solar power generation in rural areas and on roof-tops would gain momentum.
- Assuming a potential of 1 MW in a village, there is a potential of 600 GW in our six lakh villages.
- By November 2020, the share of renewables, including large hydropower, in total installed capacity of electricity generation had already reached over 36 per cent, according to government data. The share of non-fossil fuel energy sources was over 38 per cent. Most of the new capacity additions are happening in the renewable space, and therefore taking this share to 50 per cent will likely not be too difficult.
- India’s emissions intensity was 24 per cent below 2005 levels in 2016 itself, the latest year for which official data are available. A 33-35 per cent reduction is expected to be achieved within the next two years.
- Further, India would decarbonise energy to 50 per cent.
- At present over 75 per cent of energy used comes from fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas. This share has remained steady in recent years.
- A reduction of the share of fossil fuels to 50 per cent by the end of this decade would be an extraordinarily rapid energy transition and appears tough.
- Transport accounts for about half of the petroleum used in the country. As the economy grows, transport needs would rise. Hence, decarbonisation of transport would be essential.
- The Railways are moving rapidly towards full electrification. The aim is to become net zero by 2030.
- With the new freight corridors, the Railways can begin to rapidly increase its market share of goods traffic, leading to substantial decarbonisation of transport.
- Electric two- and three-wheelers and cars have now become cheaper to
run.
- The share of EVs has, as a result, quickly risen to 9 per cent of new registrations in Delhi this year.
- Public charging stations are coming up across India.
- Market forces on their own would achieve a rapid transition to e-mobility and decarbonisation in the coming years.
- This would get further accelerated as retrofitting of existing vehicles
into EVs gets authorised and succeeds in the market.
- India would then be able to achieve its extremely ambitious 2030 goal of decarbonising energy to 50 per cent.
Way Forward:
India is likely to reduce the share of fossil fuels from over 75 per cent to 50 per cent by 2030, then does it really need another 40 years thereafter to get the remaining 50 per cent fossil fuel share down to zero?
- Simple extrapolation would imply getting to net zero within the next two
decades.
- But there are industrial processes like steel and cement manufacturing as well as aviation where technology for managing without fossil fuels is still under development.
- Fortunately, hydrogen is emerging as a substitute for fossil fuels.
- Green hydrogen produced without using fossil fuels and is carbon neutral.
- Airbus hopes to develop an aircraft using hydrogen by 2035. Similarly, Toyota has hydrogen cars in the market.
- India has been smart in launching its own National Hydrogen Mission.
- The first hydrogen producing plant in India has recently begun production.
- By 2025, it hopes to reduce the cost of green hydrogen to one dollar per kilogram, considered to be the inflexion point for large scale usage of hydrogen.
Conclusion:
- If India gets onto the global frontier in the large-scale use of green hydrogen and full de-carbonisation of electricity in the 2030s, then it could achieve net zero in the next decade.
- Doing so by 2047, the centenary of independence, would be a historic achievement, worth aspiring for.
Source: The Hindu BL
Mains Question:
Q. India’s progress towards Net Zero Emissions have been tremendous and it can achieve the target much before 2070. Discuss.
