Low Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth

So, after huge success and failure (!!!!) of Conference of Parties at Kyoto, Bali, Copenhagen, Cancun the world is back to square one. Basically trying to understand how to address the challenges of future where non-carbon growth will dominate the agenda and policy making. India cannot remain behind in this race at least in terms of scenario building. How we are capable to really live upto those scenario reports is different matter of study. So, lets get started.

Everyone knows global warming happens due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. By 2030 unless mitigation actions are taken, world primary energy demand expected to be 40% higher than in 2007. By 2020, in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced up to 50%. Approximately 20-30% of plant and animal species are at increased risk of extinction if increase in global average temperature exceed the range 1.5-2.5 degree C. (with respect to IPCC 2007)

In terms of per capital emissions India is still far away behind compared to USA, EU, JAPAN, CHINA. But kind of growth strategy we are pursuing, we will certainly end up paying the price of that in terms of invading the nature and developing polluting lifestyle.India`s emission is 1.18 tonnes of Co2 equivalent per capita in 2008 to that of 4.38 tonnes of global average. Though India has not created it, it stands committed to reduce the emissions intensity by 20-25 percent over 2005 levels by year 2020. The Copenhagen conference which lead to the Copenhagen Accord reflects a broad political consensus on some of the issues which are relevant to the negotiations:
" There is an agreement on the broad scientific view that the world must not exceed a 2 degree centigrade increase in warming on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development. "  All participating countries have agreed to communicate their mitigation commitments and actions. Developed countries (Annex I parties) have agreed to report measured, reported and verified (MRV) mitigation actions as per COP guidelines. With Integrated Energy Policy projecting energy needs of country in 2030 like this: need of oil to be around 3-5 times more than current consumption, need of natural gas six-9 times than current consumption, need of coal to be around 5-6 times more than current consumption; in these scenarios what will be the best strategy for low carbon economy.

What do inclusive energy policy means? At the minimum, inclusive growth means all households are electrified and that all have access to clean cooking fuels such as natural gas or LPG. Currently 85% of the rural and 10% of the urban households use biomass for cooking. We need secular shift from traditional biomass to modern commercial energy, in addition to improving the efficiency of use of traditional biomass. Towards this end, the integrated energy policy scenarios project 100 percent electrification of all households by 2020.

Government of India is witnessing different shades of policy approaches in front of them while dealing with these issues. One is determined effort which is highly probable and business as usual scenario. Here effective implementation of policies already in place makes sense to apply. Private sector sustains current efficiency efforts. There is continuous up-gradation of technology and finance from both private and public resources. Another policy approach is Aggressive effort which is highly desirable and demands visionary interventions from every quarter of government. New policies, in addition to effective implementation of existing policies; private sector efficiency efforts at higher scale and finally new technology as well as additional finance, both from domestic and international sources are key features of this approach.

In order to explore strategic options for reducing emission intensity of the economy, an analysis of the quantities and trends of GHG emissions from different sectors is essential. This helps to priorities the sectors, industries and gases where efforts can be made for an effective action. Emissions take place both during, production and consumption processes. The emission intensity of the economy can be lowered by reducing the need for production and consumption, as well as by making consumption and production processes more emission efficient. Today agriculture accounts for 18%, wastes for 3%, electricity for 38%, transport for 7%, other energy industries for 12%, cement for 7%, iron and steel for 6% of the total GHG emissions of India in 2007.

There are several technology options to improve the combustion efficiency and lower CO2 emissions. Super critical plants operate at higher temperatures leading to net heat rate of 2235 kCAl per kWh and specific emission of 0.83 kg per net kWh11. The technology is available globally and the cost is almost the same as sub-critical plants. As per recent guidelines and projections, super-critical power plants would account for 60 percent of the thermal capacity to be built in 12th plan and 100 percent in 13th plan. Super critical units thus could contribute up to 50 GW by 2020. Integrated Coal Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) is another promising technology, which can attain higher efficiencies and lower CO2 emissions and also produce synthetic chemical fuels such as diesel and hydrogen. However initial estimates under Indian conditions of high ash coal show very high auxiliary power consumption and hence the overall efficiency is comparable with sub-critical units at almost double the cost. While India will continue to do its research in IGCC, commercial deployment of IGCC is unlikely before 2020. In other important energy segments India hopes to achieve target of 50, 000-65, 000 MW by hydro power by 2020. In solar energy this scenario is around 10, 000 MW and by biomass 4, 000 MW. With current installed capacity of 4780 MW, Government has made aggressive projection for Nuclear Energy 9, 800 MW by 2020 despite Japan`s Fukushima event and protests at Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant site.

India imports 80% of its crude oil requirements. This becomes more critical when we know that now transport sector has become second sector to contribute to the GHGs mostly. Ways to tackle this crisis is increasing the share of public transport to 60 percent and share of rail in passenger transport to 35 percent, increasing the share of rail in freight movement to 50 percent, increasing efficiency of vehicles, introducing cleaner fuels, increasing electrification of railway tracks. There are other steel, cement, construction and other major industries contributing to carbon growth need to be taken into account but details are not being presented in this post.So electricity generation required in 2020 projected at existing terms is gross generation (Billion kWh) 2, 104-2359 and net generation estimated in 1970-2208 Billion kWh. I will deal about mitigation and adaptation strategies, concept of national accounting and green DGP in next post, till then have a nice energy efficient day.

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Moving towards joint Planned and Autonomous Adaptation

Summary of lecture given by Professor Judith Rees, Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. This was a part of India-Uk Lecture Series 2010


Two of the massive challenges identified by the National Action Plan on Climate Change are to implement the pathways to a low carbon economy and secondly to shape adaptation policies minimizing cost of climate change impacts on economy and society.


The adaptation strategies have to be undertaken considering the markets and technology in consideration, focus on human development, plans for deforestration and ecosystems, developing capacities and legal instruments for governance of climate change, and evolving institutions which will take care of economics of climate risks especially insurance.


We should consistently ask adaptation questions in terms of research approaches and gaps, decision making under uncertainty, distinctive approaches between science based action and social science inspired action, cost-benefit trade-off.

There are basically two types of adaptation mechanisms; Planned and Autonomous Adaptation। Scientific knowledge of climate change takes care of quantitative aspects of impacts arising out of climate change. We should give more and more emphasis on qualitative aspects through certain specific case studies by suggesting cost effective interventions either as governmental, community based approach or private firm level approach.


There exists huge knowledge gaps regarding adaptation mechanism. Science and technology has measure role to provide input to this mechanism by proposing
adaptation measures, strategies and risk aversion policies. While doing this sources of adaptation investment, adaptation cost have to be generated while taking care of barriers towards adaptation. Here individual and community incentivisation of the adaptations is very very necessary.


Therefore we must start thinking adaptation in social science way.

There is lot of uncertainty at the decision making level. The limitations of climate and integrated models for decision making are obvious. Limitations of local climate trend data are also beyond any question.Uncertain abilities of eco-systems have been observed many times. Uncertain pace and success of mitigation is also not in question, Paucity of socio-economic projections for assessments of vulnerability, adaptive capacity and growth paths are also increasingly visible.


The science of climate change believes in evolving predictions and then moving towards action. This approach first tries to structure a problem, assess the relevant changes, assess the relevant impacts, design and assess adaptation options, evaluate outcome. Approach considering socio-economic priorities believes in assessing risk and then evolving towards policy regime. First it structures a problem, then it proposes adaptive strategies, further it assesses strategies, assess trade-off between various options available and eventually evaluating outcome. Here it should be remembered than science based approach comes with optimization and that of social science approach comes with robustness. In both the situations it is the social cost that is very very significant to take into account.


As we know that adaptation is deliberate action reducing adverse consequences and harness beneficial opportunities from climate change which may be actual, anticipated, perceived. These also may be normal actions, and mechanisms to cope with past climate variability and address adaptation deficit. These are responsive actions to climate related change in macro economy. These are actions not related to climate change nevertheless reducing vulnerability or increase adaptive capacity.


In the planned adaptation it is public actions by national, state, local government owned bodies that are responsible for adhering to the procedures. Autonomous adaptation is done by private companies (transitional or local), NGOs, community groups are equally crucial.
There seems to be artificial divide due to uncoordinated autonomous actions by spatially and functionally segmented public sector actors. So, there is need for governments to inform, incentivise and regulate both public and private actors.In essence character of agency affects outcome of the process. Understanding nature of agency is significant in managing trade-off between different interest groups, thus balance in coordination is keenly desirable.


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