India Achieves its NDC Target of 40 Percent of Installed Electricity Capacity, Says RK Singh

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.”

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.”

RK Singh said this, during his Presidential Address at the Twenty-Second Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture, held in New Delhi, 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 22nd Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture year marks the 102^nd birth anniversary of Shri Seth and brought together thought leaders, industry, and policymakers for insightful discussions, inspired by the ideals of Shri Seth, towards fostering collaborative efforts and finding meaningful solutions for climate change.

In the 22^nd Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture, Chief Executive Officer, Tata Trusts, Shri Siddharth Sharma said that Shri Darbari Seth was an extraordinary leader who could get his people to move mountains. “It is his defining interest in his energy, energy conservation and environmental sustainability much before it became the existential issue of our times which made him take the lead and set up TERI. He said that men like him leave behind enduring legacies and uplift the generations that follow.”