Do not make promises that you know you cannot keep: Suresh Prabhu

Former environment and power minister and current Sherpa on negotiations with G7 and G20, Suresh Prabhu tells Aditi Phadnis in an interview the approach India should adopt on Net Zero. Edited excerpts

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting US President Joe Biden on Net Zero, even as we speak. What stand should India take: Net Zero or Near Net Zero?
 
Net Zero presupposes peaking, because you cannot have Net Zero unless you peak. India is on a trajectory where peaking is going to take a while. It is also a fact that India’s per capita emissions are among the lowest in the world. It is the only country that has kept its commitments as per the Paris accord of 2015. And among the G20 countries which account for more than 80 per cent of the global GDP, India is the only one to achieve its commitment. Peaking will happen after some time. The challenge is, when you peak, you have to slide down considerably to reach Net Zero – and very, very quickly after peaking. Obviously this has consequences. Take use of energy sourcing - because emissions come from consumption, it doesn’t just happen in the air. Either you are using vehicles or industry or you are using buildings – that’s where energy consumption happens. Then there’s agriculture and dairying which involves emission of methane which is one of the top greenhouse gases. If you have to stop that, you have to stop a lot of activities, impacting livelihood, economy, employment and overall growth..… When they talk about green power, by using hydroelectricity, the storage of water can cause emission of greenhouse gases as well. Going by this, once we reach peak levels, we will have to bring everything down and stop everything to reach net zero…or provide alternative technologies.

 
Obviously suspending all activity will have huge impact on human life, livelihood, employment, economy, and many other areas. It will have an impact on India’s overall growth. If you make a commitment, it must have sanctity. And the costs are very high for Indian society and economy given the trajectory it is on, currently.
 

So what should India do?
 
India is working on reducing emissions and has managed to significantly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. There are two important parameters. One is energy intensity; another is carbon intensity. On both, India has improved. There was a time when energy consumption used to rise one point with every one percentage point rise in GDP. This has gone down considerably, so has carbon intensity. To do this, we are changing our energy mix, by including solar and wind. We are also going in for energy efficiency. As minister for power, I passed a law for energy efficiency and we created the Bureau for Energy Efficiency. We had stipulated gold standards for reducing emissions – for buildings, for gadgets and many others. As a result of that our carbon intensity is also going down. Now, Net Zero. If a country makes a commitment, it must be sacrosanct. We are paying the price today because globally people didn’t keep their commitments – they said they would spend billions of dollars to achieve a cleaner environment but we never saw that money. So, people have become cynical about these commitments. If you make a commitment that is very difficult to implement, it won’t get done. So you should not make promises you know you can’t keep.

 
What is the answer?
 
While Net Zero will happen – and it should happen – I have a solution for it. Just like the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, which consists of all the top scientists of the world who came together to study the problem of climate change and concluded that it is human intervention-induced, I feel we should form a similar panel of scientists from industry, government, universities, laboratories and every sphere of life and they should develop technologies that can reduce emissions considerably. These technologies should not be covered by Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection. Any country can use these technologies and emissions rates will come down. Without using such technological breakthroughs, if some countries say they are committing themselves to lower emissions, it is not practical. Climate change is not a political game. It is not taking the ball and putting it in someone else’s court. It is a life and death situation. This (development of alternate technologies) must happen very quickly. And it requires people envisaging a paradigm shift in energy, transportation… We feel Net Zero must happen. But it must be practical and workable and must address the source of emission. You cannot do that without having technology to replace the present one.

 
Without a deadline, nothing can ever be achieved…
 
So, I’m saying: let’s do a deadline for technology.
 
What is the deadline you will put?
 
All that, we need to sit down and discuss.
 
So, if you were to advise the Prime Minister, Mr Modi should not give any deadline to Joe Biden…
 
I’m not saying that. The Prime Minister will say whatever is best for the country. And if he gives a direction I’m sure Indians will gear up and do that. I’m just saying we need to work in a way that Net Zero has some meaning. The central principle on climate change is ‘common but differentiated responsibility’. And we are the only country that has surpassed the Paris accord targets…

 
So, at the meeting with President Biden, India should limit itself to admiring the problem, rather than offering solutions...
 
No, no, no…how do you think we have reduced emissions? India is the only country which has reduced emissions.
 
But reducing emissions is not the full story…
 
Let me give you an example. Every country today says it wants to fight the pandemic. But can you fight the pandemic without the tools? I’m saying we must develop tools to address emission levels and climate change rather than setting impractical deadlines for net zero.