Officials close to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is cracking down with senior bureaucrats and foreign advisers until a possible 2050 deadline for a move to zero emissions, anonymous people familiar with the case reported to Bloomberg News.
The 2047 target is also being considered, these officials said, according to Bloomberg, a date marking the centenary of India’s independence from British rule.
Coal-heavy India and China, as well as the US, hold the top three places for the largest global emissions of greenhouse gases.
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China, which still draws about 60% of its power from coal, is the main pollutant, followed by the USA, India. In India, the use of renewable energy is growing, but coal still supplies about 70% of the country’s electricity. Coal India by state is the largest mining company in the world. U.S. coal generates about 19% of its total electricity and more coal production is expected to close. Historically cheap natural gas NG00,
is a popular U.S. source, but renewable energy is now competitive.
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China said last year that it would target carbon neutrality by 2060, and peak in emissions by 2030. U.S.-led Joe Biden has recently pledged to hit net zero by 2050.
The timing and scope of India’s announcement could depend on promises made by other countries on April 22, when Biden is ready to gather world leaders for the Earth Day summit and he wants promises. get new from attendees, including India and China. Modeling the International Energy Agency shows a possible path for India to approach net-zero emissions in the mid-2060s.
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And some, mostly Republicans, officials and industry representatives believe the U.S. is feeding a climate change statement into overseas competition.
The Paris Climate Agreement is “bad for America,” because it “does nothing to hold real pollutants, such as Communist China and India, to account,” said Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida. The agreement in Paris is voluntary for all participants but there is a need for regular reporting on efforts towards the goal of keeping global warming to 2 degrees Celsius at the top end of the range. Former President Trump had withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris agreement but Biden returned.
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Earlier this month Chinese officials announced what environmental policy experts had estimated most of the unchanged energy and climate targets from last year’s big announcement: the country will reduce carbon emissions per unit of economic output by 18% over the next five years, she said. China uses carbon emissions per unit of economic output, or carbon intensity, instead of overall emission reduction targets.
“We really wanted to see what the 14th five-year plan would be [part of the ruling party’s routine updates] talking about how you can actually get, or perhaps even more ambitious targets, ”Dimitri de Boer, chief executive of ClientEarth, an environmental law charity, told Communal Media. “What we have seen from the plan itself is that there is a target to reduce carbon intensity by 2025 but we cannot say exactly what that means in total emissions.”
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In their policy statement earlier this month, Chinese government planners offered a little more detail in a summary of the new five-year plan. It sets a target for non-fossil energy to produce 20% of total energy consumption by 2025, which requires further investment in solar and wind energy.
“This is a gradual improvement at best” for China, said Lauri Myllyvirta, chief analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Helsinki. “There’s a lot more going on as usual.”
– The Associated Press added.