Since 1995, India has submitted two national communications (NATCOM) in 2000 and 2012 with data from 1994 and 2000, respectively. In 2010, Parties decided that developing countries would submit a Biennial Update Report (BUR) to update their emissions inventory every two years and the mitigation actions taken, following from the most recent NATCOM. India submitted its first BUR in December 2015, presenting an emissions inventory for 2010. Under the Paris Agreement, this periodicity of reporting has been maintained. The common methodologies to account for nationally determined contributions would have to be agreed upon by 2020.
A second design feature of the transparency mechanism will be an independent technical review as well as a multilateral review of progress achieved. The international review will be in the spirit of being "non-intrusive, non-punitive and respectful of national sovereignty". Although the contributions are nationally determined, they would have to be fulfilled and preferably "ratcheted up" in order to keep global temperature rise within two degrees (or 1.5 degrees) Celsius. In the event that the collective global achievements (as evinced from a "stock-take" exercise) fall short, even more drastic measures would be needed.
Also Read
India has submitted ambitious plans to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP (33-35 per cent below the 2005 level by 2030), aggressively pursue the deployment of renewable energy (40 per cent non-fossil fuel power capacity by 2030), and increase forest cover to serve as carbon sinks (for 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide). The responsibility of having reliable estimates of national emissions and the impact of its mitigation measures falls squarely on having a transparent and robust domestic process for GHG accounting. By its own admission in the 2015 BUR, India does not have any process in place to account for GHG emissions via specific policy interventions. While the physical outputs and financial outlays for policies are documented at various levels, there are no institutional mechanisms in place to monitor the associated emissions (reductions).
When distilled down to the operational level, the main challenges for a robust MRV system in India are the sources of data and the flow of information. Consider energy and product use within the industrial sector. This sector accounts for close to 25 per cent of India's GHG emissions. Currently, we have broad stroke and nebulous national-level data and the methods and assumptions in arriving at these emissions are not indicated clearly. The evolving international MRV mechanism will insist on greater transparency and clarity.
As an alternative, India could use its current institutional structures to upgrade information collection and analysis. The most authoritative data source on industrial production and inputs at the unit (factory) level is the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI). As India graduates to more advanced levels of reporting, which would need to reflect consumption and production at disaggregated levels (individual sources), data sources like the ASI would become more salient.Although individual production units (of which there are more than 200,000) hold data on their energy consumption, the survey itself is not yet geared to capture energy and other product use accurately in these units,but rather focuses more on the economic metrics that define them. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, we see but we do not observe!
The Council on Energy, Enviroment and Water(CEEW) carried out a detailed assessment of industrial emissions using the ASI as the primary data source, supplemented by other data sets. Thanks to the current focus on national-level data alone, official reports on GHG emissions indicate confounding changes (between 2007 and 2010) in key sectors such as iron and steel. In addition, large chunks (20-25 per cent) of emissions are accounted under heads like "non-specified industries".In national reporting, sectors such as food and beverages have a much larger footprint (more than six times) than what the granular ASI data suggest. There is clearly inconsistency in the flow of information. Identifying these would help evaluate sub-sectoral emissions trends more accurately. Such an approach would also assist in measuring the impact of policy interventions, such as the Perform Achieve and Trade scheme (for energy efficiency) across the wider industrial sector, beyond just the plants that were subject to PAT norms.
A robust domestic framework for MRV (and associated emission reductions owing to specific policies) needs the participation of stakeholders from key sectors of the economy. An open, democratic society must welcome transparency and ensure that there is no conflict of interest,among institutions that report emissions information and those that vet and verify them. For this, India would need national legal arrangements, an appropriate coordinating body, and a mechanism for stakeholder engagement. The more rigorous and transparent India's MRV framework at home, the stronger would be our position in international negotiations.
Arunabha Ghosh is the chief executive and Karthik Ganesan is a senior research associate at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comceew.in). They are co-authors of Energizing India: Towards a Resilient and Equitable Energy System (SAGE, 2016).
Twitter: @GhoshArunabha