A question of energy

India is unprepared for climate change negotiations

On September 23, the world’s leaders will gather in New York for a summit called by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to address climate change. The purpose of the summit is to discover an agreement on the nature of a broad worldwide contract on addressing carbon emissions and other aspects of climate change. The contract – a successor to the Kyoto Protocol – will then be drafted in a process beginning at the Lima Conference of Parties later this year and finalised at the Paris Conference in 2015. The stakes are high. Once again, India is suffering through an abnormal monsoon. In the post-climate change era, this has happened more and more often. Other “weird weather” events have also become common, adding dangerously to the earlier-understood risks of climate change, including rising sea levels and warmer summers. Unpredictable weather has led to even moderately prosperous farmers looking for predictable sources of income, especially underwritten by the government’s minimum support prices; they have flocked to foodgrain production, for example. This is one of the contributors to high food inflation. For India, thus, the risks of not acting on climate change are ever increasing.

Climate change negotiations are, therefore, about more than climate change. What is at stake is livelihood, and food inflation, which is one of the most salient issues in Indian politics today. Also in the balance is India’s energy production. The West has increasingly moved away from electricity generated from coal. A month ago, United States President Barack Obama said that total emissions from US power stations would in the next 15 years fall to a level 30 per cent lower than they were in 2005. This promise is aided by the US reserves of shale gas. China is the major problem: while in 2012 the US emitted 5.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, China released nine billion tonnes. Still, the Chinese at least recognise reality and are not building more coal-fired plants. Indeed China has signalled its willingness to abide by carbon emission caps from 2016 onwards; it intends henceforth to reduce its carbon footprint.

India will, thus, be completely isolated, unless the new government does some quick strategic thinking. More coal-fired plants are planned or are waiting to be commissioned in India than anywhere else. Basically, coal is the backbone of India’s energy plans, especially given the fact that gas-fired power plants are operating at half their capacity. The new government has focused on getting more coal out of the ground to fulfil its promise to radically improve India’s power situation. The impact on India’s greenhouse gas emissions, naturally, will be massive. The government, thus, has a delicate balancing act. India’s emissions per capita are still low. They are at best 40 per cent of those in China. However, they are poised for a precipitous increase. Hitherto, India has been able to claim that it is not the spoiler at climate negotiations. With the US’ and China’s changed stances, this will likely no longer be the case. It is not clear if the government is at all prepared to deal with this changed world scenario. The prime minister must go to New York in September with a more coherent plan than just saying “no”. A solution to climate change is in India’s interests, too. If India is faced with a world united in favour of emission caps, it must be prepared at least with a financing demand to enable a domestic transition away from dependence on coal.