India is promising to invest more in nuclear power and renewable energy as the world looks for ways to curb climate change. But environmental experts said they don’t expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi to set an ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as he works to bring his developing nation out of poverty.
Modi and President Obama announced a set of climate and energy agreements on the president’s three-day trip to the subcontinent, as Obama takes a leading role in climate discussions heading into the United Nations-hosted talks in Paris at the end of the year.
Getting India, the world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the United States and China, on board will be key to the negotiations. Obama has already struck a deal with China, the world’s top emitter. And, in a change of tone from previous Indian governments, Modi called climate change a “huge pressure” in a Sunday appearance with Obama.
But Modi also has mixed messages about how his country plans to participate in the negotiations.
He oversaw a massive deployment of solar power when leading the state of Gujarat and even wrote a book on climate change. Still, his administration has spoken dismissively of the U.N. process. He was also elected with a mandate to expand a sputtering economy and improve electricity access to the 300 million Indians without it, and his government has said it plans to double coal production through 2019 to fix those problems.
“Modi is demonstrating really a deep interest to clean energy growth in the country, but I think he’s also deeply interested in expanding private-sector growth and energy access growth. And that doesn’t necessarily discriminate against fossil fuels,” Heather Coleman, senior climate change policy adviser with Oxfam America, told the Washington Examiner. “So I don’t feel like we have a good sense of where India will come out.”
It’s unlikely India will follow the United States’ example in setting an ambitious target for curbing emissions before nations meet in Paris, where they hope to agree on a framework for governing cuts of the greenhouse gas emissions scientists blame for driving climate change.
That’s fine, experts said, as India faces unique conditions with its masses of extremely impoverished citizens. And while India is responsible for 6 percent of global emissions, its emissions per person are one-tenth and one-quarter of that of the U.S. and China, respectively, which indicates the nation’s climate problems are solvable.
“The trick will be fashioning the commitment that seriously addresses climate change while also meeting India’s urgent development challenges. And that’s challenging, but it can be done,” Elliot Diringer, executive vice president with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told the Examiner.
That’s why the approach Obama took in the visit with Modi was savvy, said Paul Bledsoe, who worked on climate change under former President Bill Clinton. Bilateral agreements aimed at phasing out heat-trapping refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons, boosting India’s use of nuclear power — an emissions-free source of energy — and expanding solar power that can be installed in rural communities without a traditional electric grid can solve electricity access problems while reducing emissions.
“For the countries with large amounts of extreme poverty the focus has to be on a low-emissions development agenda rather than an emissions target at this stage,” said Bledsoe, who is now a senior energy fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. “If we drive down the cost of distributed generation solar through 10,000 Indian villages, that’s going to have benefits globally. It’s really about driving down the cost curve, especially for distributed renewable energy.”
India and China have been holdouts in previous international negotiations, as they have said capping emissions would keeps hundreds of millions of their citizens in poverty. The situation for China has changed enough to where it for the first time set a target date of about 2030 for when its emissions would begin to decline.
Modi’s announcement of setting a national renewable energy target was a good sign that India is committed to addressing emissions, which would expand upon the 100 gigawatts of solar power it hopes to achieve by 2022. Domestic pressure to improve air quality, much like in China, also is pushing Modi to address emissions, said David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.
“The announcement that Modi made [Sunday] is a major step toward making his bold renewable energy ambitions a reality,” Waskow sad.
While India’s economy has improved since talks began two decades ago, it still views itself as a developing nation — and, in many ways, it still is — and that could complicate talks. On top of that, Modi is a nationalist who won his election on an economic platform, and his fledgling government doesn’t appear keen on giving away too much to the U.N. process.
“There are some deeply entrenched views within the Indian foreign policy establishment and moving beyond those will be challenging,” Diringer said. “This is a relatively young government, and navigating its way through the domestic and international politics takes a little time.”
