At the COP26 climate conference of Glasgow in November 2021, Prime Minister Modi had announced a five-fold target for India, which he termed ‘panchamrit’. These were the achievement of non-fossil fuel capacity of 500GW, 50 per cent of energy requirements from renewable sources, reduction of carbon emissions by a billion tonnes, reducing carbon intensity of economy by 45 per cent of what it was in 2005 (all these to be met by 2030), and India achieving ‘net zero’ emissions by 2070. 

In 2022, India walked this talk with a number of actions.  In May, the government set up a National Designated Authority for the Implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (NDAIAPA). The establishment of such a body was part of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The authority will oversee all aspects of projects set up for the generation of carbon credits; it will receive, evaluate, approve such projects, maintain a registry of the projects, and confirm emissions reduction from them. This will help projects in India secure carbon credits that can be sold in the carbon markets.  

Panchamrit target

On August 26, India submitted its updated ‘nationally determined contributions’, formalising two of the panchamrit targets (emission intensity of GDP and non-fossil fuel electricity generation capacity.) In November, at the COP27 climate conference held in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, India submitted its ‘long-term, low-emission development strategy’, or LT-LEDS. This submission gives the shape of a formal international commitment to several climate action programs, such as green hydrogen, ethanol blending, making urban infrastructure resilient, measures towards circular economy, and increasing tree cover.  

In December, the Rajya Sabha passed the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2022. This amended EC Act provides legal underpinning to the development of a carbon market in India, and paves the way for a domestic emission trading system (ETS). Under ETS, entities are given a carbon emission limit; any overachievement will fetch carbon credits that can be sold in the market to those entities that could not meet the limits. India already has two instruments. One is the ‘perform, achieve, trade’ (PAT), which works much like the ETS, but for energy efficiency rather than emissions, and the other is the renewable energy certificate (REC). These schemes are to be merged into one, carbon credit certificate (CCC), which can be traded in India and abroad. 

The EC Act amendment is a landmark legislation that has the potential to spawn carbon credit-earning projects across the country.  The State government and the corporate sector have also been active in climate action. In May, Arunachal Pradesh announced a plan to build bamboo forests over 100,000 hectares of land. Many other State governments are following suit. ‘Nature-based solutions’ (NBS) is gathering pace in India, and experts say that India will be a major supplier of NBS carbon credits to the world. 

The Tamil Nadu government has launched its own climate mission. The corporate sector is doing its part, many companies are getting committing themselves to sustainable development. 

Better performance

Well, all these are for the future, but what of India’s track record? The recently-released Climate Change Performance Index 2023 shows that India secured 8th position in the index — two positions up from the previous edition. Notably, the first three positions in the index have been left vacant, as no country was able to pull itself to them. Therefore, India is the 5th among those counted, leaving behind the UK (11th position) and Germany (16th), the other G-20 countries in the index. 

The index reflects action on the ground. According to the Forest Survey of India, the country’s forest cover increased by 12,294 sq km between 2015 and 2021. Between 2005 and 2016, the emission intensity of India’s GDP declined 24 per cent. It is a fair expectation the decline will be faster in the coming years because more concrete action — increase in renewable energy, e-mobility, energy efficiency — will gather pace now.