India’s INDCs- Progress and Challenges Ahead

Context:

India has expressed confidence recently at COP24 at Katowice, Poland that it would achieve all its INDCs targets to tackle climate change ahead of the deadlines.India’s statement comes in the backdrop of new analysis by IEEFA 

About Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)

INDCs are national climate plans of countries made as a commitment to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, 2015. INDCs incorporate climate actions and mitigation and adoptive measures.

Steps taken by India in coherence to achieve INDC targets

Progress made so far:

According to Climateactiontracker.org

As of 2018, India can achieve the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) it has submitted under the Paris Agreement with its currently implemented policies. They have rated India’s NDC “2°C compatible,” meaning that if all countries were to follow India’s approach, warming could be held below—but not well below—2°C

IEEFA has estimated that India is likely to attain the goal of having 40% of its electricity generation coming from renewable sources by the year 2020 itself instead of the original target of 2030.

Challenges/Concerns ahead:

Reducing Emission intensity of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

1. Development vs. Environment: Like other developing countries, India faces the dual challenge of reconciling its rapid economic growth with a pressing need to address climate change.
2. Commitment to Low Carbon Economic Growth:Two 2017 publications by NITI Aayog have raised concerns about India’s commitment to low carbon economic growth. This is because the government’s Draft National Energy Policy and the Three Year Action Agenda (2017–18 to 2019–20), both include recommendations to increase domestic production and distribution of coal, oil and gas. While the stated aim of this expansion of domestic fossil fuel production and distribution is to enhance India’s energy security, they may result in additional fossil-based energy demand, leading to higher GHG emissions.
3. Institutional and Financial Challenges: The policies and measures formulated by the government has been crippled with inadequate financing and lack of coordination between national and state implementing agencies.
4. Challenges in Transport Sector:

• In the absence of adequate public transport, there has been an unprecedented growth in private transport in India, thus increasing vehicular emissions.
• Though the government’s plan to popularize green mobility (including EVs) is ambitious,large-scale adoption of green mobility options is limited by consumer concerns regarding technical performance of vehicles, reliability and dependability, limitation on range and refuelling options, higher upfront costs.

Increasing the Share of Non-Fossil Fuel Based Electricity

1. National Electricity Plan (NEP), 2018: The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) in a previous version of NEP had said the India did not need coal-based capacity addition till 2022. However, this was later revised stating India would need 6,440 Mw thermal power during 2017-22. This raises a concern over the future of coal in electricity generation in India
2. Land Acquisition Issues: Land acquisition has been a major hindrance in development of solar projects, wind turbines and hydro-power projects
3. Adoption Issues: Homeowners at large have not been installing solar panels at roof top. This is because small deployments naturally cost more than grid-scale farms. Homeowners do not generally consume all the energy it generates and are being unable to sell it as most of the states do not have ‘net-metering’ policy- allowing selling electricity back to the grid.
4. Raw Materials: India lacks a manufacturing base for solar components and systems and is heavy dependent on imported solar cells and modules, mainly from China. Further, the growth of solar power sector has been affected after a new import duty to protect domestic manufacturers of solar equipment has been introduced.
5. Grid Integration:Cost-effective and reliable electricity grid planning and operations is a major challenge for India given renewable energy generation is variable in nature and India already has a poor grid system.
6. Enforcement Issues: There is lack of enforcement of RPO regulations and absence of penalties when obligations are not met.

Note: Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO): It makes it compulsory for large consumers of energy to ensure that a certain percentage of energy mix is from renewable sources such as solar or wind

Enhancing Carbon sink

1. Change in type of forests: according to the State of Forest Report, 2017, there is an increase of open forests but reduction of moderately dense and dense forests, which indicates the forest degradation.
2. Poor selection of species for Agro Forestry: India has been planting commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements. However, these species are invasive, water-demanding and not sustainable in nature
3. Ineffective CAMPA utilization: State forest departments lack the planning and implementation capacity to carry out compensatory afforestation and forest conservation.
4. Dilution of Forest Rights Act: it weakens the forest dwellers and undermine the power of the village councils there. The dilution facilitates any big industrial unit to easily secure green clearance nod and any project can be implemented without any prior consent from the tribal, who are the actual forest dwellers and play an important role in conserving forest through their traditional knowledge
5. Issues with EIA Processes:Major issues with Environmental Impact Assessment Process (India) include lack of reliable data, ignoring knowledge of indigenous people, fraudulent EIA reports and unscrupulous environmental clearances
6. Lack of Research: There is insufficient research on agroforestry models suitable for the diverse agro-climatic regions for the indigenous and multipurpose species (viz. Prosopis cineraria) or on domestication of species, resulting in over emphasis on few species like Poplar, Eucalyptus, Kadam etc.

Way Forward:

1. India needs to prioritize strategies that strengthen implementation of existing policies. These strategies include ensuring adequate financing with dedicated funds for climate change in the budget, enhance institutional capacity, as well as better vertical coordination of national, state, and local governments and better horizontal coordination of concerned line ministries and departments.
2. India’s plan to reach the INDC needs to be strongly gender-equitable and community based which is vital for inclusive sustainable development and climate mitigation.
3. India needs to strongly push for Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) in order to have improved capacity that would help in generating good adaptation action plans and proposals.
4. A systematic approach for tracking the progress of mitigation actions should be built to ensure effective and timely feedback for implementation of mitigation actions.