India’s government has, following a long delay, finally submitted an updated climate pledge under the terms of the Paris Agreement.
The new four-page document, which was published on 26 August, arrives two years after the original deadline – and two months before the upcoming UN climate summit COP27 in Egypt.
The world’s third-biggest emitter has committed to reduce the “emissions intensity” of its gross domestic product (GDP) to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. India’s pledge is an update to its first nationally determined contribution (NDC), submitted in 2015, which targeted a 33-35% cut.
It also includes a commitment that around half of its installed electricity generating capacity will be made up of non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. However, this is conditional on the transfer of technology and finance from other countries.
Three weeks earlier, the Indian government announced that its cabinet had approved the update, thus “translating” the goals set out by prime minister Narendra Modi when announcing his nation’s net-zero by 2070 target at COP26 in Glasgow.
But the government is still yet to submit a long-term strategy that captures its decarbonisation plans and reflect its 2070 net-zero target, something it says it plans to do “in coming months”.
Experts and commentators have cautiously welcomed the update, with some saying that India was committing to more than its fair share of the effort required to limit warming. However, others have said it still needs “further cuts” to keep the world on track for the 1.5C target.
Below, Carbon Brief reviews India’s new climate plan and the implications for the nation’s energy sector and emissions, as well as its recently introduced policies and the challenges it faces in tackling climate change.
India’s 2030 pledge under the terms of the Paris Agreement is, technically, an update communicated to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) rather than a full second NDC.
The four-page, 500-word update is sparse on detail and lacks a clear roadmap to 2030, nor sector-specific targets or finance requirements. It comprises eight bullet points with two headline, quantified targets.
First, India has committed to cutting the emissions intensity of its GDP to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. To date, there is no globally agreed benchmark to measure this type of target.
Carbon intensity: Carbon intensity is a measure of how much carbon is being emitted per unit of GDP. A country with low carbon intensity is running its economy more cleanly than one with a high carbon intensity, either due to energy efficiency or a high percentage of renewables and/or nuclear power in its energy mix. But a country with low carbon intensity and large economy could still emit more overall than a country with a high carbon intensity and small economy. An individual country's carbon intensity can also fall while its emissions rise overall, if its economic growth outstrips the reduction in emissions per unit of GDP.
Carbon intensity: Carbon intensity is a measure of how much carbon is being emitted per unit of GDP. A country with low carbon intensity is running its economy more cleanly than one with a… Read More
An intensity target also gives India the space to avoid an absolute emissions reduction goal, allowing it to continue increasing emissions while growing economically. Its pledge, therefore, depends on total emissions and the country’s GDP in 2030. Other major developing economies, such as China, have used the same metric before.
Second, the country has pledged to “achieve about 50% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030”.
An earlier press release released by the Indian government says the goals announced in India’s NDC “do not bind it to any sector-specific mitigation obligation or action”. This language is echoed in a letter from India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav to UN Climate Change, uploaded along with the NDC submission, but is not in the NDC text.
India’s target for its land and forestry sector remains unchanged from its first NDC:
“To create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3bn tonnes of CO2-equivalent [GtCO2e] through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.”
There is still no further clarity on this sink target and the baseline from which this reduction will be calculated (See Land-use change.)
Non-quantifiable goals in the NDC include Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s call for a global “movement” centred on individual climate responsibility and “sustainable lifestyles” that he calls “lifestyle for environment” or LIFE.
Another vague 2030 target is to “adopt a climate-friendly and a cleaner path than the one followed hitherto by others at [sic] corresponding level of economic development” – a barb directed at developed countries.
According to the Indian government, the update “translates the ‘Panchamrit’ [which means ‘five nectar’] announced at COP26 into enhanced climate targets”.
However, not all elements announced by Modi in his Glasgow speech have been included in the update. Others have been clarified and reduced in their scope.
The first element of his speech – for India to meet 50% of its “energy requirements” from “renewable energy” by 2030 – has been clarified, as expected, after causing widespread confusion at the time.
It has now been refined into India meeting “about” 50% of its cumulative installed electric capacity from non-fossil sources. By its definition, this includes large hydropower, nuclear and bioenergy sources, along with solar and wind. The NDC makes the goal conditional on the availability of international climate finance.
Day after Modi’s #COP26 speech, still lot of confusion…
* 50% renewable by 2030 widely interpreted as share of electricity generation but NEA briefing yday suggested *capacity* target (raising existing 40% goal) HT @aruna_sekhar
* is 2070 net-zero GHG or CO2? Big difference…
— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) November 2, 2021The NDC drops two specific, quantified targets for emissions and clean energy that had been mentioned in the Panchamrit.
The first was to reduce India’s annual carbon emissions by 1GtCO2 by 2030, while the second was to hit 500 gigawatts (GW) of non-fossil “energy capacity” by 2030.
It is also still not clear whether the 2070 net-zero pledge made by Modi at COP26 refers to carbon dioxide (CO2) or greenhouse gas targets, with the latter being significantly more exacting.
India’s headline climate target relates to emissions intensity, defined as the total amount of greenhouse gas emitted for each unit of GDP. This means it applies to all sectors of the economy and covers greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, as well as CO2.
India’s updated NDC signals a 10-12 percentage-point increase in its emissions intensity target for 2030 – from 33-35% to 45% below 2005 levels.
Other targets include a 50% share of installed capacity for electricity derived from non-fossil energy sources, up from 40% in the first NDC. This can also be compared with the 50% purely renewable target for India’s “energy” requirements by 2030, as mentioned by Modi in his Glasgow speech.
India’s carbon-sink goal remains unchanged – namely, 2.5-3bn tonnes of CO2e through additional forest and tree cover by 2030. There is still no clarification in the NDC on what baseline this will be calculated from. (See: Land-use Change.)
India’s update to its NDC has received praise from most domestic quarters, including from WRI India for committing to “expanding renewable energy at a time of global energy volatility” and from others for clarifying at least some of the big climate announcements made at COP26 and beyond. However, the widely-cited Climate Action Tracker rating still calls it “insufficient”.
Some Indian analysts described the update as a “politically savvy” NDC, one that is safe and, as one source tells Carbon Brief, “very much in line with the balancing act they have been playing”, but that also gives the country “wiggle room” to up its target.
This is acknowledged in the update, which says that, while “no change in other sections of the document containing existing first NDC is proposed at this stage…India reserves the right to provide further updates as and when required”.
Other experts question the very idea of “ambition” in climate pledges made under the Paris Agreement. The Centre for Policy Research’s Prof Navroz Dubash tells Carbon Brief:
“Whether a country is ambitious or not assumes that we have an agreed set of benchmarks. And we don’t. So de-facto net-zero by 2050 becomes a benchmark, but there’s no reason why every country should [aim for that]. Under the Paris Agreement, we have every country coming up with their own benchmark, a contest where everybody brings their own judge. However, the main value of the Paris pledges are less tied to comparison across countries and more as a way to stimulate progress within countries.”
Dubash believes that India could achieve its intensity target, given that it is consistent with modelling studies based on India’s current policy trajectories and that “there will only be more policies” in the future.
According to him, unlike the EU where strong international targets drive domestic policy “upward”, in countries such as India and China pledges are drafted on the basis of whether they can be met and exceeded based on current climate policy.
For context, in the same week as India announced its NDC update, it also announced amendments to its Electricity Act and a new Energy Conservation Bill, which could herald more privatisation in India’s power distribution sector, fix caps for procurement of renewables and set up India’s domestic carbon market.
In July, India’s power ministry issued a notification which requires electricity distribution companies to draw a minimum share of their total consumption from renewables, of up to 43% by 2030.
To Dubash, the last example illustrates how close the country is to having a domestic generation target for renewables, not just installed capacity.
However, none of these policies are mentioned in the updated NDC. This means that India could potentially over-deliver on its promises, just as it could backtrack from them – but what happens nationally is key, say Dubash and Tuft University’s Tarun Gopalakrishnan.
Dubash, for one, is relieved that there was no quantified target for renewable or non-fossil installed capacity. He says:
“[A quantified] target incentivises and signals capacity addition, but doesn’t actually incentivise or signal the use of these things. And so you keep relentlessly building them, without spending enough time and attention on whether or not you’re going to be using everything you build. You run the risk of stranded assets down the road, whether for renewable energy or coal. We don’t want to get into a situation where you’re not thinking about your entire electricity system, transmission, storage, coal phase down or early coal retirement.”
What Dubash would “really much rather see” as an important climate signal is a non-fossil generation target, even if it is much more modest.
“Nobody is saying 50%, but do 30%, or 40% – whatever the numbers seem to suggest is feasible, but a generation target sends a clear signal that you’re looking at the whole system and the functioning of the whole system in a way that moves you towards renewables.”
Avantika Goswami, programme manager of climate change at thinktank CSE, says there is a “duality” in how CSE views India’s new pledge, from global and domestic points of view.
On one hand, India’s energy demand is set to rise as people grow more prosperous. To have a “half of that potentially be sourced” from non-fossil sources – “despite the pressures of financing and energy security that are currently dominating energy decision-making” – is “commendable”, “ambitious” and in line with the Paris Agreement that states each successive NDC should present a progression.
It is particularly notable given that many developed countries are committing far below their fair share of emission reductions, Goswami says.
Viewed domestically, however, she tells Carbon Brief:
“We know that India can show more ambition in service of its own interests. We are already at about 40% installed capacity of non-fossil sources. The Central Electricity Authority of India’s projections suggest that non-fossil capacity will rise to 62% by 2030. Applying the targets to generation instead would represent greater ambition, raising it from 22% today to 50% in 2030. Removing the 1GtCO2 emissions reduction goal, which was also announced at Glasgow, is another missed opportunity, since it could have provided a clear signal to various sectors, to enable them to peg their own mitigation targets to a quantified national target.”
India’s first NDC was classified as 2C or Paris “compliant” by Climate Action Tracker and in line with its fair shares and historical responsibility.
This was a rating often cited by India’s policymakers as a sign of India’s progress towards its climate goals, versus those of developed economies. In April 2021, power minister RK Singh cited this rating at an IEA ministerial, saying that “we are the only major economy in the world whose actions in energy transition are consistent with keeping the temperature rise below 2C” and that “developed nations should not talk about net-zero”.
In 2021, however, CAT revised its rating based on updates to its methodology, which included not just taking stated country pledges at face value, but evaluating current policies and actions to get there, as well as net-zero targets, forest commitments and finance requests.
This methodology change resulted in a downgrading of India’s pledge to “highly insufficient”. The change was criticised by the Indian government and experts.
In its profile on India, however, CAT points to the fact that India still has “one of the largest coal [power] pipelines in the world” and that it should phase out coal by 2040 to be 1.5C compliant.
Responding to Modi’s Glasgow announcements, CAT changed its ranking for India from “highly insufficient” to “insufficient”, noting that “updated targets will, at most, drive minor reductions in real-world emission reductions.” It said that “further cuts are needed in 2030 emissions to put India on a 1.5C pathway”.
A new study in Nature Climate Change, meanwhile, surveyed 599 negotiators and 230 scientists worldwide. Among a selection of countries “most important for climate mitigation policies”, the study ranked India’s updated NDC as fifth in compliance (meaning the “expert evaluation of the likelihood that the NDC pledge submitted by their home country would be honoured”) and fourth in ambition.
The study’s lead author told Down to Earth:
“India has been pretty careful to not make bold pledges far beyond what the Indian government is confident it can deliver.”
Writing in the Conversation, Gopalakrishnan points out that, while India’s targets are an improvement from its 2015 pledge, “they are largely a continuation of the country’s “business-as-usual” emissions trajectory”.
He adds that, while “a fast-growing country can reduce its emissions per GDP and increase its emissions”, India missed out on the opportunity to spell out its national ambitions in a way that would “attract” the international finance it says it wants.
