Isramart : India Can Curb Carbon-Emissions Growth Through 2031, Saran Says

Isramart news:
India, the world’s fourth-biggest polluter from burning fossil fuels, can keep its greenhouse-gas emissions growing more slowly than the economy through 2031, the top climate official said.

Shyam Saran, prime minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy on climate change, said in an interview that India can reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by as much as 35 percent through that year and make a “similar” cut in carbon dioxide, a gas scientists blame for global warming.

Asia’s third-biggest energy consumer faces pressure to follow China and the U.S., the biggest air polluters, to announce a target to slow its emissions ahead of the global climate change talks starting Dec. 7 in Copenhagen. Saran said his figures won’t necessarily be the ones India may propose.

“I have no idea on whether we will take them to Copenhagen as our voluntary measures on tackling climate change,” Saran said. India has previously released the energy-intensity estimate, he said yesterday.

The nation, which has refused to accept binding goals or set a date for when its emissions would peak, may carry a proposal on curbing pollution to the talks, environmentalists have said. India has said it will stick to a June 2008 plan to increase solar generation, energy efficiency and reforestation as its principal response to climate change.

India has already been reducing energy and carbon intensity.

“We have delivered an average 6 percent economic growth while and energy consumption has risen 3.8 percent a year since 1990,” Saran said.

India Versus China

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh may unveil India’s voluntary targets today, Reuters reported yesterday, citing unidentified government officials.

India may cut its carbon intensity by 24 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and the reduction may reach 37 percent by 2030, the Reuters report said, citing provisional government figures obtained by the news agency.

China’s cabinet said on Nov. 26 that it will cut output of carbon dioxide per unit of gross domestic product by 40 percent to 45 percent from 2005. A day earlier, the U.S. said it will propose a direct CO2 reduction in the same period of about 17 percent, provided that dovetails with a new domestic climate law.

India is under “tremendous pressure to commit itself to some measures,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of Nobel Prize- winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told reporters in New Delhi on Dec. 1. “Negotiators may not be willing to put it upfront but will carry it as a backup if other things fall into place.”