India pledges to achieve 75 pc jump over present emission cut

Ahead of the crucial climate change summit in Paris, India today made a "comprehensive and ambitious" pledge to reduce its greenhouse emission intensity by upto 35 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels, a 75 per cent jump over its present voluntary commitment.
Announcing this here, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said that, as per preliminary estimates, "at least USD 2.5 trillion (at 2014-15 prices) will be required for meeting India's climate change actions between now and 2030".
India also said that it would achieve 40 per cent installed capacity for electric power from non-fossil fuel resources by 2030, which would be a jump of 33 per cent from the present capacity.

Noting that India's climate actions have so far been largely financed through domestic resources, he said that any substantial scale-up of climate action plans would require greater resources.
Spelling out India's Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) on Mahatama Gandhi's birth anniversary ahead, the environment minister said, "Our INDCs are comprehensive, ambitious and progressive and reflect all issues of mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology transfer and capacity building."
India's current voluntary pledge is for reducing emission intensity of its GDP by 20-25 per cent over 2005 levels by 2020, Javadekar told reporters here.

He said that as a major emerging economy, India has mainly three important targets.

"We want to reduce our emission intensity by upto 35 per cent by 2030. This is against the backdrop of 20 per cent (reduction) by 2020 and that means a rise of 75 per cent in our target.
"Secondly, we will increase our non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by upto 40 per cent," Javadekar said.
In addition, India has also pledged to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
"We are creating nearly three billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent of carbon sink through major afforestation programmes. We will save carbon emission to the tune 3.59 billion tonne of CO2 equivalent. It is a huge contribution from a developing country," he said.

In a 38-page document submitted to UNFCCC late last night, India said it would need, as per preliminary estimates, around USD 206 billion between 2015 and 2030 for implementing adaptation actions in agriculture, forestry, fisheries infrastructure, water resources and ecosystems.
Noting that mitigation requirements are even "more enormous" for the country, India referred to an estimate given by NITI Aayog that the mitigation activities for moderate low carbon development would cost around USD 834 billion till 2030.