We may have to recalibrate the country’s decarbonization effort

Source: The post is based on an article “We may have to recalibrate the country’s decarbonization effort” published in The Live Mint on 6^th September 2022.

Syllabus: GS 3 – Pollution and climate change

Relevance: problems associated in achieving net zero emission.

News: India faces challenge of raising economic growth, achieving decent living standards for all, and lowering carbon emissions simultaneously.

What is the current situation and challenges with India in achieving net zero emission?

Reducing emissions

Target: The latest announced NDC by India aims to increase non-fossil-fuel-based capacity to 50% of overall installed capacity by 2030.

Challenge: The emissions depend on the energy generated not on the installed capacity. Thus, the target of 50% generation might have been better, although tough because of the challenges of land and infrastructure availability and grid stability.

Target: India also pledged at CoP-26 to cut the country’s emission intensity of gross domestic product (GDP) by 45% from its 2005 level. It is an increase of 40% over the earlier commitment.

Challenge: This would mean lowering emissions across all polluting sectors, especially energy (thermal power and transportation). It accounts for the highest share (about 60%) of India’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

The emission from manufacturing sector is about 20% and the efficiency of our coal-based plants is way below global standards.

Renewable and Green Energy

Target: Adopting renewable (solar, hydro, and wind etc.) energies is also a challenging task.

Challenges: 1) domestic availability of raw materials, 2) cost competitiveness, 3) access to technology and scalability, 4) increasing geopolitical conflicts and supply chain disruptions, 5) availability of green hydrogen, indigenous raw material for batteries and technology.

Solutions: 1) Having resilient, homegrown manufacturing bases with scalability and cost-competitiveness. 2) Incentivize green manufacturing which would create jobs as well, 3) A sharper focus on new sectors such as solar modules, batteries and cell manufacturing.

Decarbonizing Industries

Target: Decarbonizing conventional smoke emitting industries will also be challenging. Crisil’s analysis shows that only five sectors (iron and steel, cement, refining, non-ferrous metals, and chemicals) account for about 70% of all industrial emissions.

They also emit a higher intensity of non-CO2 gases (such as SOx, NOx, mercury and methane) and, hence, are hard-to-abate sectors.

Solutions: Green hydrogen-based direct reduced iron (DRI) processes along with the use of renewable energy will eliminate production of blast furnace slag and fly ash.

Recently the cement producers have announced green capital expenditure to meet 100% of their power requirement through renewables.

Challenges: Hydrogen is green only if produced from solar, wind or biofuel sources of energy. Now, the problem is that India’s cumulative solar and wind capacity is about 114GW currently. It is too little to meet the goal of 5 million tonnes per annum of green hydrogen generation by 2030, which was announced in the country’s Green Hydrogen Policy.

What can be further course of action?

The efforts are needed on indigenous green technology to cut cost, improve scalability and ensure faster adoption.

Financial support either from government or from private investment or negotiations with advanced economies for climate action funds is needed.

There is a crucial need for a holistic, national decarbonization vision that lays out practical goals and guides implementation especially by using our local technological skills.