India’s leadership on solar and industry transition is the reason to believe the world can achieve its climate goals: UN

In News: UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed highlighted “encouraging news” on global efforts to overcome climate change while attending a webinar titled ‘People and Climate- Just Transition in Practice’.

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It was emphasized that as governments look to restart their economies after Covid-19, it is vital to pursue a recovery that is not only sustainable, resilient and fair, but also job-rich.

Japan and the Republic of Korea, together with more than 110 other countries, have now pledged carbon neutrality by 2050. China says it will do so before 2060. India’s leadership on solar and the industry transition is reason to believe that we can achieve our climate goals.

It is essential that the European Union delivers on its promise to adopt a new climate target this year, by coming forward with a baseline of reducing emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030.

There must be no new coal, and all existing coal in the European Union and in all OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries should be phased out by 2030, and by 2040 elsewhere.
Investments in renewable energy yield three times more jobs than investments in fossil fuels.

India’s Position in Solar Energy

About 5,000 trillion kWh per year energy is incident over India's land area with most parts receiving 4-7 kWh per sq. m per day. Solar photovoltaic power can effectively be harnessed providing huge scalability in India.
National Institute of Solar Energy has assessed the Country’s solar potential of about 748 GW assuming 3% of the waste land area to be covered by Solar PV modules. Solar energy has taken a central place in India's National Action Plan on Climate Change with National Solar Mission as one of the key Missions. National Solar Mission (NSM) was launched on 11th January, 2010. NSM is a major initiative of the Government of India with active participation from States to promote ecological sustainable growth while addressing India’s energy security challenges. It will also constitute a major contribution by India to the global effort to meet the challenges of climate change. The Mission’s objective is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy by creating the policy conditions for solar technology diffusion across the country as quickly as possible. The Mission targets installing 100 GW grid-connected solar power plants by the year 2022. This is line with India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions(INDCs) target to achieve about 40 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources and to reduce the emission intensity of its GDP by 33 to 35 percent from 2005 level by 2030.

Recently, India achieved 5th global position in solar power deployment by surpassing Italy. Solar power capacity has increased by more than 11 times in the last five years from 2.6 GW in March, 2014 to 30 GW in July, 2019. Presently, solar tariff in India is very competitive and has achieved grid parity.

Industry Transition

Indian industry has made important progress on energy and emissions reduction in the past, primarily through improving the energy efficiency of key industrial processes. Six sectors of India are required to decarbonize, these sectors include iron & steel, cement, petrochemicals, bricks, aluminium and fertilisers. Options to reduce emissions in all these industries include energy efficiency, increased circularity & demand reduction and deploying de-carbonization technologies across different sectors.

Industry Charter for Near Zero Emission Ambition by 2050

On 24th September 2020, amidst a pandemic raging in the foreground and an ever-deepening climate change crisis in the background, six leading market players from Indian Industry voluntarily came together to pledge for near zero emissions by 2050. They committed to pursue a set of vigorous decarbonization measures, both at the company level and collectively, to set an example for industry peers to contribute in meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

TERI, which has been at the forefront of assessing future pathways for India's energy and industry transition, will serve as the Secretariat of this industry coalition.

This group together launched an 'Industry Charter for Near Zero Emission Ambition by 2050' at the Climate Week NYC 2020.