India reduces emissions rate by 33% in 14 years: Report

New Delhi, August 15, 2023. Owing to the faster pace of renewable energy generation and increased forest cover, India's greenhouse gas emission rate has significantly dropped by 33% in the last 14 years, according to officials privy to the preparations of the Third National Communication (TNC) report.

The findings of the report (To be submitted to the United Nations)showed that India is fulfilling its commitment to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by walking the talk, to reduce greenhouse emissions intensity by 45% from 2005 to 2030. This shows that being proactive, India is scaling its efforts to achieving the targets towards greenhouse emission reduction. At this pace, the 45% target of cutting down emissions by 2030 might be achieved well in advance.  

The report further highlighted that India's rate of emissions intensity (Total amount of emissions released for every unit increase of gross domestic product (GDP) ,plunged by 33% from 2005 to 2019.

While India’s average rate of reduction in greenhouse emissions was 1.5% from 2014 to 2016, it intensified its efforts in the area and thus the average rate of reduction in emissions increased to 3% annually in the period 2016-2019.   

This is the fastest rate of cutting down the greenhouse gases so far. Thanks to the government's push towards renewable energy, even though fossil fuels continue to dominate the energy sector.

“There is continuous reduction in the emission intensity of the Indian economy, which shows the country has been able to completely decouple its economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions,” an official was quoted saying to Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

This rate of reduction will certainly help India ward off the pressure by the developed countries to discontinue the production and usage of coal.

This could become possible due to the various schemes and programmes run by the government to promote non-fossil generation and targeting emissions in industrial, automotive and energy sectors, along with a substantial increase in forest cover. By 2019, 80.73 million hectares or 24.56%area of India was covered by forests and trees only. 

India has been taking a lot of initiatives to cut down its carbon footprints by focusing on renewable energy, electric cars, increasing the forest areas, along with the promotion of green hydrogen, manufactured by splitting water molecules using renewable energy. It has even constituted National Green Hydrogen Mission which has got the cabinet’s approval in January this year.

In India, hydro, nuclear and renewable energy (Non-fossil fuel-based power) contributed to 25.3% of India's total power generation in the fiscal year that ended in March, up from 24.6% three years earlier.Meanwhile, thermal power stations continue to provide 73% of the electricity consumed, down from about 75% in 2019.

Last month, the Group of 20 (G20) major economies failed twice to agree on phasing out the use of fossil fuels and on setting concrete targets to reduce greenhouse emissions.