From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
This statement comes from the Indian Ministry of Power:
The Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy Shri R. K. Singh has called for a change in the global climate change discourse and narrative, shifting from a focus on total emissions to per capita emissions of each country. “India’s per capita emissions are one third of global average, one of the lowest in the world; despite that, the developed countries until recently had been putting pressure on large countries like India, to reduce emissions. Their per capita emissions remained 3 – 4 times the global average. The narrative was on total emissions of each country.”
“Point of comparison should be Per Capita Emissions”
The Minister asserted that the narrative and discourse should not be about total emissions. “If we talk about total emissions, the country with minimum emissions could be an island nation with small population, even though they may be consuming huge amounts of energy and emitting huge quantities of carbon dioxide per person. Hence, the point of comparison has to be per capita emissions. This is the change in discourse which is needed, and I want institutions like TERI to talk about this.”
The Minister said this, during his Presidential Address at the Twenty-Second Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture, held in New Delhi today, August 25, 2023, in memory of Late Shri Darbari Seth, the founder of TERI.
Noting that developed countries would talk about phasing out of coal, but not about phasing out of natural gas or other fossil fuels, the Minister exhorted TERI to come out with studies on climate actions by various countries. Once the global South starts controlling the narrative, the world will be a much fairer place, said the Minister, adding that India has been insisting on phasing out of all fossil fuels.
Speaking about India’s actions towards reducing carbon emissions, the Union Minister said that India has achieved its NDC target of 40% of our installed electricity capacity coming from non-fossil energy sources nine years ahead of schedule, in 2021 itself. “Today, 43% of our capacity is from non-fossil fuel sources. No other country has added renewable energy capacity at a rate at which we have done. We pledged at COP-21 in 2015, that we will reduce our emissions intensity by 33% by 2030; we did this by 2022, eight years in advance. So, in Glasgow, we have said that by 2030, we will have 50% of our capacity coming from renewables and that we will reduce our emission intensity by 45%. We will achieve that too well before time.”
“The truth needs to be told, developing countries need space to grow”
Shri Singh said that the developed countries have reached their peak of development; so, their emissions will either remain static or come down. “However, the building stock of developing countries will multiply, since we are developing; we will need more cement, steel and aluminium to construct those buildings and plants. This will lead to more emissions. So, we need space to grow. This point needs to be made by think tanks like TERI, that this is the space which is required by developing countries to grow.”
The Minister said that the nation is not going to compromise on the availability of energy for our growth, adding that the country is responsible for only 4% of legacy carbon dioxide load in the environment, whereas our population is around 17% of world population.
The Minister said that this discourse needs to be changed not at only at the level of world leaders, but also among the people around the world in the developed countries. “The truth needs to be told, I want institutions like TERI to step up and change the discourse.”
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1952260
If I was India, that is exactly what I would be arguing!
India’s emissions are seven times the UK’s. and have increased by 52% since 2011. Ours have declined by a third in that time.
But by focussing on per capita emissions, India would effectively be let off the hook for decades until the developed world had cut its emissions to India’s levels.
And as the Minister states, India has no intention of cutting emissions for a long time to come. Note his comment:
Shri Singh said that the developed countries have reached their peak of development; so, their emissions will either remain static or come down. “However, the building stock of developing countries will multiply, since we are developing; we will need more cement, steel and aluminium to construct those buildings and plants. This will lead to more emissions. So, we need space to grow. This point needs to be made by think tanks like TERI, that this is the space which is required by developing countries to grow.”
The Minister said that the nation is not going to compromise on the availability of energy for our growth, adding that the country is responsible for only 4% of legacy carbon dioxide load in the environment, whereas our population is around 17% of world population.
Finally let’s examine India’s renewable targets:
Speaking about India’s actions towards reducing carbon emissions, the Union Minister said that India has achieved its NDC target of 40% of our installed electricity capacity coming from non-fossil energy sources nine years ahead of schedule, in 2021 itself. “Today, 43% of our capacity is from non-fossil fuel sources. No other country has added renewable energy capacity at a rate at which we have done. We pledged at COP-21 in 2015, that we will reduce our emissions intensity by 33% by 2030; we did this by 2022, eight years in advance. So, in Glasgow, we have said that by 2030, we will have 50% of our capacity coming from renewables and that we will reduce our emission intensity by 45%. We will achieve that too well before time.”
40% of installed capacity coming from non-fossil fuels?
Needless to say, the actual generation figures are nothing like 40%. Fossil fuels accounted for 77% of India’s electricity last year, with a further 12% from nuclear and hydro, which are probably about maxed at now. Wind and solar contributed only 9%.
In terms of overall energy, the situation is even worse. Fossil fuels account for 88% of primary energy consumption, and wind and solar only 4%.
As non-OECD countries account for two thirds of the world’s emissions, we can forget about Net Zero in our lifetimes if India’s demands are met!
Its an argument that one used to hear from climate activists. The agenda was reducing industrial activity in the West. Their argument started out by saying that tonnage of emissions was driving a climate crisis, therefore total tonnage had to be reduced.
This worked fine as long as the West was the main emitter. But then the activists were then faced with the inconvenient fact that China had become the worlds leading emitter of tonnage, by a long way, double the next largest, at 10-11 billion tons a year.
At that point they moved to per capita emissions, because the agenda was only ever to get the West and particularly the US to reduce emissions. It was not to get China to reduce. China had to be given a free ride.
This has been rather dented by the fact that China is now doing per capita emissions at about the level of the EU. So some other strategy has to be found why the West should reduce and China carry on increasing, and we now hear less and less about per capita emissions.
The problem with the per capita argument, now belatedly offered by India, is that it doesn’t work arithmetically. The activists usually claim that emissions have to fall from present levels of about 38 billion tons a year to something well under 10 billion, and by sometime like 2040-50. Or climate crisis, floods, fires and pestilence.
But by 2035 China alone will be emitting 15-20 billion tons. India, who knows, maybe 10 billion? And then there’s the rest of the developing countries. Get them all up to EU per capita levels and we will hit 50 billion tons a year, even if the West gets to Net Zero.
bigoilbob and others offering the per capita argument end up in effect arguing that China, India, Indonesia and the rest should feel free to do what in another context they have claimed to be destroying human civilization on earth.
There are number of conclusions from this.
The most important one is that the leading and fastest growing emitters simply don’t believe in the climate crisis story. If they did, no way would they be carrying on as now.
The others are to note the other contortions which the activists go through to justify their stance of ‘West reduce, everyone else increase’. One is to claim its all to export to the West. But not to propose West should bann said imports. Another is to claim China is installing lots of wind and solar. So somehow this makes it OK for China to mine and burn more coal than the rest of the world put together? Either tonnage is the driver or it isn’t.
A final one, hinted at by bigoilbob, is to say the important thing is historical emissions. This is of course logically nuts, the thing that is supposed to be driving climate catastrophe is future emissions and total ppm. Who did what in the past should be irrelevant. But the point of this and all these arguments is not the logic, and the point of the agenda is not the climate. Its to find some way of justifying the ‘West reduce, everyone else increase’ agenda.
Why they are so keen on that agenda? A long story, very interesting and important, but too long for now…
No, it shouldn’t be about per capita emissions- since there shouldn’t be ANY discussion of carbon emissions at all!