Revised NDC looks to stick to COP26 pledges
India will be the 97th country out of 193 parties to the Paris Agreement to submit an updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). With India submitting its NDC sometime this week, the top five greenhouse gas emitters globally would have submitted their updated NDCs or strategies to deal with the climate crisis in the short run by 2030. India’s updated NDC is 1.5°C compatible, senior officials of the Union environment ministry said on Monday while explaining that there is no standard methodology to enumerate compatibility of NDCs with the 1.5°C goal because there is a vast difference in methodologies adopted by developed and developing countries in evaluating NDCs.
“Our NDC is definitely 1.5 degrees Celsius compatible. But is there a standard methodology to evaluate NDCs in this light? No. We signed up for the Paris Agreement, and it clearly states that it aims to limit dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. We are delivering on the agreement and trying to do much more than that,” said a senior environment ministry official when asked if the updated NDC will put India on the 1.5°C pathway.
“The US has fully occupied 25% of the carbon space. They have announced that they will become carbon neutral by mid-century. Does that make them 1.5°C compatible? Never. With great difficulty we managed to get a graph in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report recently that shows carbon budget consumption since 1850 instead of 2010 that developed countries were pushing for. We need to look at the future now. Who will have the narrow carbon budget pie left? That of course doesn’t mean we will not be ambitious. Our NDC is definitely more ambitious than what developed countries have submitted,” the person added on condition of anonymity.
Environment ministry officials said that India’s NDC is a “significant contribution to the global goal on temperature rise under Paris Agreement. The officials confirmed that India is working on a long term strategy (LTS) document as well which will be formally submitted soon to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The LTS will articulate India’s long term goal of carbon neutrality by 2070. The Union cabinet approved India’s updated NDC under the Paris Agreement to be communicated to the UNFCCC last Wednesday.
The updated NDC promises to reduce emissions intensity of GDP by 45% by 2030, from the 2005 level, and achieve about 50% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030, as promised by the Prime Minister in the Glasgow climate conference last year. And while there was no mention of the previously articulated net zero by 2070 deadline, an official in the environment ministry said that the two quantitative commitments are in sync with achieving the deadline.
The environment ministry, in an explanatory note on the updated NDC, stated that the target on achieving 50% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based sources would be taken up with the help of transfer of technology and low-cost international finance.
Independent experts said India’s NDC is ambitious in view of the present geopolitical situation.
“India’ s enhanced NDC couldn’t have been bolder given the emerging global growth and inflation concerns. These will decisively shift India’s emissions curve on to a lower trajectory. It is now up to the developed world to undertake more ambitious actions to ensure that the world is on track to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Vaibhav Chaturvedi, fellow at Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).
“The Union cabinet’s approval of India’s updated NDC brings clarity on the nation’s 50% renewable energy capacity target by 2030. India is in a unique position to show the world how to phase in renewables and phase down fossil fuels, while we also address issues of reliability, affordability, and broader issues of development,” said Bharath Jairaj, director, energy program, World Resources Institute (WRI) India.
Around 164 nations have updated NDC since 2015 when the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, was adopted. Only 96 of those countries have submitted a new or updated NDC with reduced total emissions compared to their previous NDC, according to analysis by Climate Watch, a data platform run by WRI.
China, the largest emitter globally at present with around 30% of the world’s CO2 emissions, updated its NDC last year. China’s updated NDC goals include peaking CO2 emissions before 2030; lowering CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by over 65% from the 2005 level; increasing the share of nonfossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 25% and forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic metres from the 2005 level; and bringing its total installed capacity of wind and solar power to over 1.2 billion kilowatts by 2030.
The US, the second largest emitter, as per data published by US Environment Protection Agency , submitted its NDC last year ahead of COP26, which said it plans to achieve an economywide target of reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels in 2030. The EU, responsible for 9% of emissions, announced that member states are committed to a target of a net reduction of at least 55% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990. The US and EU have long-term goals of carbon neutrality also by midcentury.
The IPCC has flagged the wide gap between what countries have committed so far through their NDCs and the action needed to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. The amount of greenhouse gases such as CO2 emitted by the world needs to at most peak by 2025 followed by a 43% reduction over the next 10 years in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the year 2100, IPCC said in its Working Group III report on ‘Mitigation of Climate Change.’ It warned that policies implemented till the end of 2020 will add more emissions and lead to a rise of 3.2°C by the end of the century. Average annual GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions in the past decade were higher than any previous decade: emissions between 2010-19 were around 12% and 54% higher than in 2010 and 1990 so meeting the 1.5°C is unlikely, it said.
Despite IPCC’S clear warning on the danger of exceeding 1.5°C, progress on new, more ambitious 2030 climate targets and participation in sectoral initiatives have stalled since COP26, an analysis by Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis that tracks government climate action said last month. The world is heading to a warming of 2.4°C with 2030 targets and even higher, 2.7°C, with current policies, it found.