The many paths to a greener future

Context: Highlighting the pathways for tackling the Indian carbon emissions.

Current carbon emissions:

• Today’s global GHG emissions are about 55 billion tonnes CO2 equivalent.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that global emissions must reach close to zero by 2050 for us to have a reasonable probability of restricting warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
• The US peaked at 15 tonnes per capita, Japan at 10 tonnes and China at 7 tonnes per capita. In comparison, India’s present GHG emissions are about 3.5 billion tonnes CO2 equivalent, which translates to just 2.5 tonnes per capita.

Pathways for carbon emissions: 

• Business-As-Usual (BAU): In the BAU pathway, our emissions continue to grow with increasing usage of fossil fuels till we reach the middle-income status of about $8,000 to $10,000 in GDP per capita.
• Several studies have indicated that on this BAU pathway, even by 2050, India will still only reach about 5 tonnes per capita.
• On the BAU pathway, India will be emitting about 15 to 20 billion tonnes at its peak in 2070.
• While this represents an “equitable” solution from the perspective of using carbon space, it will likely aggravate global warming and will not be accepted at the global level.
• Low carbon pathway: Focussed on peaking the emissions at 2050.
• On this Low- Carbon pathway, India would be still emitting about 8 billion tonnes of GHG when the rest of the world will be close to net-zero. 
• This too may not be acceptable to the global community and will seriously jeopardise the 1.5 °C goals.
• The Net-Zero pathway: Would require that our emissions peak before 2050 and reach zero thereafter, and needs a development paradigm that is independent of the use of fossil fuels. 
• In India’s case, there is sufficient empirical evidence to show that we have reduced our carbon intensity because we have been progressively reducing our usage of fossil fuels.
• This is mainly because of the adoption of policies for energy efficiency and renewable over the last 15 years. India has already built a low-carbon economy.

Conclusion: Each pathway requires different policy packages and sets up different investment and consumption incentives. These policy packages will impact the long-lived asset decisions that we are making currently and will shape our competitiveness- ness in the coming decades.