Climate change at COP30: India must lead, not wait for other nations

If most countries are unlikely to make strong commitments, it is relevant to ask whether India should also hold back. Climate change is too important for us to take this course

Climate change has been driven off the headlines by other more immediate problems: the Russia-Ukraine war, the continuing conflict in Gaza, and the Trump tariffs. But the problem of global warming has not gone away. It will return to the centre stage when the UN Climate Change Conference, COP30, meets in November 2025 in Brazil.  

 

The problems facing COP30

 

What can we realistically expect from COP30? A major problem is that the combined mitigation commitments agreed to by all countries in COP26 will not keep global warming within the limits decided. The ideal 1.5-degree Celsius limit is likely to be breached in the next five years, and unless much stronger action is taken, global warming could touch at least 2.4°C by the end of the century.

 

Countries were asked to submit a stronger set of mitigation commitments well before COP30 for the period 2025-2035. Very few have done so. The US, under the Biden administration, did propose that US net GHG emissions would be reduced by 61-66 per cent compared to the base of 2005 and then decline to net zero by 2050. However, with President Trump taking the US out of the Paris Agreement, this commitment no longer holds. 

 

European countries have their own problems. They are under severe fiscal strain because of the need to step up defence expenditure. The Ukraine-Russia conflict also has them concerned about energy security.  

 

The developing countries were hoping for a large package of external financial assistance to finance investments for mitigation and adaptation, and the amount was to be decided by COP29 at Baku last year. The Baku meeting agreed that developing countries (excluding China) would need $1.3 trillion in annual external assistance by 2035. But developed countries were willing to provide only $300 billion per year by 2035. The rest would have to come from the private sector. Since the commitments of developing countries on climate action have always been conditional on the availability of financial assistance, they are unlikely to respond positively. 

 

What route should India take?          

 

If most countries are unlikely to make strong commitments, it is relevant to ask whether India should also hold back. In my view, climate change is too important for us to take this course. We could instead show genuine leadership by reaffirming our commitment to reach the target of net zero by 2070, which was announced by the Prime Minister in COP26 in 2021.

 

Our earlier nationally determined contributions (NDCs) were not explicitly linked to a defined emissions trajectory. We should now submit a new set of NDCs, covering the period 2025-2035, which are aligned with the net-zero goal.

 

The Viksit Bharat (developed India) goal requires  gross domestic product (GDP) to grow between 7.5 and 8 per cent per year from now to 2047. We have to ensure a sufficient supply of energy to sustain this growth. This would normally involve a substantial increase in emissions. However, we can modify the emissions trajectory by (a) bringing about a sufficient increase in energy efficiency; (b) adopting a conscious strategy of electrification to shift from fossil fuel energy to electricity; and (c) shifting our electricity generation away from coal to non-fossil fuel sources.

 

The scale of the transition needed is illustrated in Figure 1, which presents alternative scenarios, based on work being done by my colleague, Utkarsh Patel. The red curve indicates emissions under a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, in which policies continue as at present, with the shift to renewables continuing at the present pace. This offers no prospect of getting anywhere near net zero.

 

The blue curve indicates emissions under an alternative scenario, where strong policy changes are introduced consistent with reaching net zero by 2070. It shows emissions increasing for some time, but at a slower rate than in the past, flattening out in the 2030s, and declining thereafter. Similar results have been reported in other studies.   

 

We should publicise internally what the second pathway implies. There are critics who complain that our emissions are increasing whereas those of other major emitters are falling. Our emissions will indeed increase for a while, but this should be accepted as long as the  trajectory takes us to net zero by 2070.

 

Reaching net zero by 2070 implies that coal-based capacity must peak around 2035 because coal-based plants have a life of about 40 years. Including an appropriate peaking date in our NDCs will focus attention on this aspect and increase the credibility of our commitment.

 

The new NDCs should indicate the expansion in renewable energy (RE) generating capacity that will be needed. . The current target of 500 gigawatts (GW) of non-fossil generation capacity by 2030 should be doubled to 1,000 GW by 2035. This implies adding almost 77 GW per year (largely wind and solar), starting from the current level of 228GW.  This is a difficult though not impossible target, but it calls for detailed work to identify the critical constraints that hold back expansion and take corrective steps.

 

The new target of expanding nuclear capacity from 8.8 GW at present to 100 GW by 2047 is an important initiative. The NDCs could include what can be achieved by 2035 though much of the expansion will occur later. The government has also announced that atomic power generation, hitherto a monopoly of the public sector, will be opened to the private sector and that the Nuclear Civil Liability Law will be amended to facilitate private investment. Specifying firm target dates for introducing the proposed legislation would help.

 

Figure 1 shows that in the net-zero scenario, the share of electricity supplied by wind and solar power (vertical blue bars) will increase from 12 per cent at present to over 40 per cent by 2035, and well over 50 per cent by 2040. As these are intermittent sources, this expansion will have to be supported by comparable investments in grid-scale storage, and also new transmission capacity. It will also call for reforms in electricity pricing, allowing much greater flexibility in both wholesale and retail pricing of electricity. These need not be included in our NDCs, but they have implications for planning the electricity sector.

 

The NDCs could include specific targets for the share of electric vehicles (EVs) in new sales for each category of vehicles (two-, three- and four-wheelers) to be reached by 2030 and 2035. They should also include targets for modal shifts, i.e. increased share of public transport in all major cities and in freight movement by Railways. These shifts can substantially reduce energy demand for transport and bring down emissions.

 

The Railways have almost completed track electrification, but they must now set targets for phasing down procurement of new diesel-electric locomotives. Existing diesel-electric locomotive factories in the country should gradually switch to producing electric locomotives from a given date in future.

 

Increasing forest cover is an important part of both mitigation and adaptation. Our earlier NDCs included creation of an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 Giga tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover, but since no base year was specified, it is not possible to measure progress. We should specify a new target for afforestation by 2035, indicating the base clearly.

 

Financing the transition

 

As mentioned above, the finance package that emerged from Baku left many developing countries deeply dissatisfied. This disappointment will almost certainly surface again in COP30. But if we want to be realistic, we have to recognise that developed countries are unlikely to change their position.   

 

This is very bad news for low-income countries, especially those that are debt stressed.  However, India may be less affected because it is better placed to attract both debt and equity, from foreign private capital and also sovereign wealth funds for green energy projects.

 

India’s ability to attract foreign capital in sufficient quantity is not a foregone conclusion. It will depend critically upon our macro-economic situation remaining stable and on the availability of a pipeline of well-structured projects, to be implemented by strong public and private sector entities. An important constraint that could limit investment in power generation is the financial condition of the discoms. The central government needs to address this urgently, in partnership with the states. Even if a few states succeed, it will encourage others to follow suit.

 

In this background, the most important contribution that the global community   can make to assist the transition in India is to expand the flow of long-term non-concessional finance from Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs). These institutions need to be empowered to significantly expand their lending and, more importantly, explore innovative means of risk sharing to leverage private finance, such as blended finance, first loss guarantees, etc. The relevant MDBs for India in this context are the World Bank/International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Asian Development bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Islamic Development Bank, the New Development Bank (BRICS), and the Asian Infrastructure Development Fund.

 

The appropriate forum for discussing this issue, however, is not COP30, but the G20, which includes all the key countries that control these institutions. Climate change negotiators from developing countries (including from India) have traditionally resisted giving primacy to the MDBs and emphasised the UN Climate Funds as the preferred channel for international assistance. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to yield results.

 

Given the present governance structure, the US will be critical in ensuring that the World Bank/IFC, and also the Asian Development Bank, can play an expanded role. It is difficult at this stage to judge what position the new US administration will take on this issue. The Heritage House Manifesto 2025, widely regarded as influential in Republican circles, had recommended that the US should actually leave the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The Trump administration has signalled that it does not intend to do so, but it has initiated an internal review of the functioning of the MDBs. It is unclear whether this review will be completed before the G20 Summit in South Africa.

 

While we can always hope that our COP negotiators succeed in unlocking additional finance on the scale needed, in practice India should work closely with other G20 members to persuade the US to agree to a larger role for MDBs. As it happens, the G20 Summit for 2026 is scheduled to be held in the US. Perhaps President Trump can be persuaded to use that Summit to signal a new global consensus on MDB lending.  

 

The author is former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India