The latest suggestion was made by an EU delegation led by Gerassimos Thomas, director general for taxation and customs union within the European Commission, who defended the proposed carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) in its meetings with Indian officials.

Ajay Seth, India’s economic affairs secretary, told Reuters in an interview: “Their suggestion is not practical. Their team had come and met us … the solution they are offering doesn’t work for a developing economy like India.”

New Delhi has conveyed its stance to the EU delegation, labelling the proposed CBAM as unfair and detrimental to domestic market costs, Seth said.

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The EU last year approved the world’s first plan to impose tariffs on imports of high-carbon goods, including steel, aluminium and cement, aiming to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Negotiations between the EU and India continue at a “technical level,” an EU statement said after the delegation’s visit earlier this month.

EU officials are trying to win over countries like China, South Africa and India that have opposed the CBAM.

The European Commission delegation had told India that the carbon tax’s primary intent was not to raise revenue but to ensure the supply of greener goods to the EU market.

The EU delegation suggested India could implement its own carbon tax to fund advancements in supply chains and cut carbon emissions, while maintaining its share of the EU market.

Higher costs

Seth said the greening of the steel industry would entail higher costs for the economy, and “with income levels which are one-twentieth of the income levels in Europe, can we afford a higher price? No, we can’t.”

Assuming there is no domestic Indian plan to tax high-carbon production – and incentivise a move to lower-carbon methods – the EU plans to collect the carbon tax on each consignment of steel and aluminium from Jan. 1, 2026, potentially imposing tariffs of between 20% and 35%, according to industry estimates.

Analysts warn that the deadlock over carbon emissions could strain bilateral trade and affect discussions on a free trade agreement (FTA).

“As India is negotiating an FTA with the EU, it should be ready for the scenario that Indian products will attract a high 20%-35% CBAM tax in the EU and their products will enter India duty free,” said Ajay Srivastava, founder of Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a New Delhi-based think tank.

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The EU is India’s second-biggest export destination with nearly $100 billion of exports in total in 2023.

Seth said India wants that EU to adhere to the carbon emission rules agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which allowed developing nations like India more flexible emission-cutting targets compared with developed countries.

India, with a carbon intensity of 632 grams per KWh in 2022, according to think tank Ember, is expanding its renewable capacity and has reduced its carbon intensity by 3.5% since 2018. It aims to achieve net zero by 2070.

“We have now about 170 or 180 gigawatt of renewable energy, but that is not available during night time,” Seth said, noting the challenges of producing greener exports solely for the EU market.

The post Indian official calls EU carbon border tax unfair and unacceptable appeared first on Climate Home News.

Debt-laden growers want an existing government procurement system to be made legally binding and to raise the minimum price for a wider range of crops – which could help them move away from thirsty rice and wheat farming.

But some agricultural analysts argue that bolstering the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for produce would not resolve the wider climate problems farmers face, nor ease demand for scarce water resources.

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Deedar Singh, a 50-year-old farmer from Patiala, joined a march towards Delhi in mid-February and spoke to Climate Home at a camp on the Punjab-Haryana border, 200 km from Delhi. He participated in a similar mobilisation back in 2020 that lasted for just over a year.

With a family of nine to support, he complained that his five-acre landholding and meagre income of 200,000 rupees per year ($2,400) cannot provide a decent quality of life, especially as weather extremes worsen.

“If untimely rain destroys our rice or hot temperatures shrink the wheat grain, our crops are ruined, leaving us unable to even cover the costs of the next cropping season,” said Singh. Most people in his village rely on financial support sent by their children who have migrated abroad, he added.

Farmers gather at the Shambhu border, between Punjab and Haryana, to burn effigies of political leaders and shout slogans in support of the protest, February 27 2024 (Photo: Kanika Gupta)

Globally, India accounts for 10% of agricultural output and is the second-largest producer of rice and wheat. It is also the biggest consumer of groundwater. Its 260 million farmers depend heavily on depleting water reserves to irrigate their crops.

That means they are also struggling with climate change, as about 65% of the country’s cropped area depends on rainwater. Erratic rainfall and shorter winters are harming yields, with heavy downpours causing flooding and a sudden spike in temperatures a year ago causing wheat grain to shrink.

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) reports that for every 1C increase in temperature, wheat production suffers a significant decline of 4-5 million tonnes.

Debt drives suicides

Water resources are running low and farmers’ input costs have soared – yet the government-administered minimum support price (MSP) has not risen accordingly, said Ramandeep Singh Mann, an agriculturist and member of Kisan Mazdoor Morcha, an umbrella body spearheading the current protest.

That has left farmers with no money to pay for contingencies and has forced many to take on high levels of debt, he said.

“At some point your back breaks. When that happens, there is no other solution but to take extreme steps,” he added, referring to suicides among indebted farmers.

To boost falling yields, farmers are using more inputs like water and fertilisers, leaving them with higher production costs and lower profit margins.

Some states have provided free or subsidised electricity, as well as loan forgiveness for debt-strapped farmers, but since 2014, only half of the intended waiver recipients have benefited, according to a study by the State Bank of India.

These woes have fuelled a growing wave of protest, as farmers feel they have no other recourse.

Nonetheless, Sardara Singh Johl, a 97-year-old agricultural economist from Ludhiana and former vice-chancellor at Punjab Agricultural University, said the latest mobilisation was unlikely to result in the dialogue required to address the broader problems facing farmers.

“They already have MSP for wheat and rice, and these are high-paying crops. Even if you reduce the price risk with MSP, what can you do about the other uncertainties?” he asked.

In mid-February, at the last round of talks with the government, ministers proposed to purchase five additional crops – moong dal, urad dal, tur dal, maize and cotton – from farmers at an MSP for five years through central agencies, but farmers rejected the offer.

Jagjit Singh Dallewal, leader of the non-political Samyukta Kisan Morcha group, which is also involved in organising the farmers’ protest, said the proposal would mainly benefit farmers willing to switch from paddy or wheat to other crops and would not ensure a stable income.

Farmer leaders give a press conference at Shambhu border, between Punjab and Haryana, on February 27 2024. Photo: Kanika Gupta)

Water reserves shrink amid over-use

Economist Johl argued that, irrespective of its profitability, rice is no longer a suitable crop for Punjab as its water table recedes to a dangerously low level.

A study by Punjab Agricultural University found that between 1998 and 2018, groundwater levels in the region had dropped drastically, from 10 metres below ground to 30 metres, largely due to a shift from traditional canal irrigation to widespread adoption of tube wells for water extraction.

Farmers are aware of Punjab’s dwindling water resources, said Mann, but they need guaranteed price support for more crops in order to shift away from water-intensive rice cultivation.

“They know that if they are able to earn as much as they do from paddy, they will grow other crops. But without fair support of MSP, it is hard to make that switch,” he said.

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Uday Chandra, a professor of government at the Georgetown University in Qatar, said key food-supplying states like Punjab have struggled to get their problems heard and dealt with by the national government.

“The problem is that what the Punjab farmer wants isn’t sustainable,” he said, referring to the state’s shrinking water supplies. “The best way would be to bring them into discussion and find a solution that is specific to them.”

Trucks lined up at the Shambhu border, 200 km from Delhi, after being stopped by the central government from advancing to the Indian capital, February 27 2024 (Photo: Kanika Gupta)

Thousands of farmers who were initially stopped by heavy police control outside Delhi have now made it to the capital after receiving permission to protest at the Ramlila Maidan ground. They are determined to maintain their mobilisation during the general elections – which will take place over several weeks from late April until the start of June – if their MSP demands go unmet.

In 2021, angry farmers backed down after the government rowed back on laws that had sparked huge protests. But they have now returned to direct action, calling on the government to fulfill its promises, including demands for pensions, debt waivers, penalties for selling counterfeit agricultural inputs, and withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.

Call for high-tech solutions

Mann said climate change is compounding their woes – yet while the government acknowledges the problem, it is doing little to help the sector deal with it.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

However, at the ICAR’s Annual General Meeting last month, Arjun Munda, Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, said the Modi government is committed to bolstering the agricultural sector and supporting farmers, including with high-yielding, resilient seed varieties released by ICAR in the past decade.

It also issues Agromet weather-based crop advisories with the India Meteorological Department to about 60 million farmers twice a week and promotes practices for more efficient use of water and nutrients.

But protesting farmers said the government’s measures are failing to help them adapt adequately to a changing climate and water shortages.

Bhupinder Singh, a farmer in Punjab’s Mohali district, discusses his transition to organic farming methods as a means to prevent the burning of stubble remaining after rice cultivation, November 26 2023. (Photo: Kanika Gupta)

Haranjeet Singh, 53, of Ludhiana in Punjab, said the rice variety farmers are now planting gives smaller harvests, after the government suspended use of a more productive but thirstier variety which also took longer to mature and produced more stubble – a major cause of air pollution when burned.

“Unfortunately, these new seeds don’t give us as much yield,” he said. “We are spending the same amount of money and getting less in return.”

Madhura Swaminathan, daughter of the late MS Swaminathan – the architect of India’s Green Revolution which boosted crop yields and tackled the nation’s food scarcity issues in the 1970s – believes greater use of technology could help.

The professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore pointed to an example she encountered in Amritsar a few years ago, where groundwater sensors were connected to mobile apps, enabling users to remotely control water pumps and conserve water.

“We must embrace new technologies, farming practices, and techniques to tackle the challenges brought by climate change,” she said.

The post What will it take to protect India’s angry farmers from climate threats? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate Home analysis shows that renewable energy investments make up four-fifths of all projects seeking a transfer from the old Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to the new system under article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement.

Experts have long written off the vast majority of credits produced from renewable energy as junk because they often already provide the cheapest sources of power in most of the world and selling offsets to fund them does not have any additional impact on emissions.

Some of these projects have also been accused of human rights violations such as forced evictions for the construction of large dams.

Harry Fearnehough from New Climate Institute told Climate Home that “it could definitely undermine the credibility of the mechanism because, while there’s still uncertainty over what it will look like, as a starting point you have a huge supply of low-quality offsets that are potentially available at a very low cost”.

Established in 1997 by the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s CDM allowed rich countries to meet some of their climate obligations by financing emission-cutting projects in poorer ones.

The programme has received widespread criticism for its patchy human rights record and for failing to deliver promised climate benefits. Supporters of a new mechanism currently being developed under article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement say it is an improved, higher-integrity successor to the CDM.

Winning a lifeline

Countries are still wrangling over many aspects of the future market, but one much-debated issue was settled at Cop26 in Glasgow.

Under pressure from Brazil, Russia, China and India, countries agreed that a vast number of projects originally created under the CDM were allowed to migrate to the new mechanism. This handed them the chance to significantly extend their lifespan and their potential credit sales.

Project developers had until the end of December 2023 to fill in a simple two-page form and submit their transition requests.

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Of the nearly 3,500 eligible projects, over a third (1,284) seized that opportunity.

In total, the projects that have requested transition by the deadline could supply 1.4 billion tonnes of carbon credits between 2021 – the start year for accounting purposes set by the regulation – and 2035, according to a preliminary analysis by NewClimate Institute shared with Climate Home. That is more than the annual CO2 emissions of Germany.

While a relatively small share of the projects opted in, they account for approximately three-quarters of the potential supply of carbon offsets.

That’s because some of the programmes seeking to move could produce an outsized volume of credits. The two biggest ones – a hydro plant and a nitrous oxide emission reduction scheme, both in Brazil – each have the potential to issue around 6 million tons of offsets a year. That’s similar to the annual emissions of Sierra Leone.

Fearnehough says that “very few, if any, of these credits are genuinely likely to be additional”, going beyond what countries would do anyway without the carbon finance.

“A key reason for this is that the CDM was really only scheduled to run up to the end of 2020,” he added. “No investor would have made a decision purely based on expecting revenues from credits in the 2020s because, quite simply, there was no political indication that the possibility to move over to a new mechanism would exist”.

Climate and social concerns

That is particularly true for the renewable energy projects vastly dominating the list. Experts say they are highly likely to fail the additionality test, meaning their credits do not bring any climate benefit. When used to compensate for real emissions elsewhere, they result in more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.

The reason is simple. Many renewable offsets came into existence just as solar and wind power were becoming the cheapest source of energy in most countries. After years in operation, they are likely to be profitable from the sale of the electricity alone, without the need for additional revenues from carbon offsetting.

A 2016 study commissioned by the European Commission concluded that the vast majority of these projects “are not providing real, measurable and additional emission reductions”.

The Jirau hydropower plant is located on the Madeira River, in Brazil. Photo: UHE em Jirau/Flickr

Hydropower projects carry even more concerns as their implementation is often marred by human rights problems. Vulnerable communities relying on rivers for their livelihoods are particularly at risk of forced displacement.

The largest project applying for the transition to the new mechanism – the Jirau mega-plant in Brazil’s Rondonia state – is a case in point.

Over the years the project has faced multiple accusations of stoking tensions, pushing indigenous people away from their territories and breaching the rights of the workers that built it. Engie, the project’s developer, previously rejected any accusations.

Other categories of activities featuring prominently on the transition list have raised major concerns in the past.

Credits from projects which claim to cut or stop the emission of industrial gases such as nitrous oxide (N20) and trifluoromethane (HFC-23) were banned by the EU in 2013 for use in its emission trading system.

That’s because, according to studies, they created “a perverse incentive” to increase the production of gases depleting the ozone layer.

Countries’ authorisation dilemma

While the CDM projects have now made their move and requested transition, they are not automatically through to the new system.

Standing in their way is the need to receive a formal authorisation to proceed from the countries where their activities are located. Governments have until 2025 to make a decision and, experts predict, it won’t be a straightforward one.

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“It’s not a guarantee that all host countries will want to approve all of these projects”, according to Jonathan Crook from Carbon Market Watch, who said there would be contrasting forces at play.

“If they authorise them, they have to do corresponding adjustments, which they might not be so keen on since those emission reductions will be deducted from their [NDC climate plans]. But, at the same time, most projects are located in very large countries and it may not make a big difference to their plans”.

The answer to this dilemma will rest primarily in the hands of China, India and Brazil. Between them, the countries host around three-quarters of all projects that are looking to migrate under article 6.4.

Spotlight on three countries

Observers of climate talks said their governments all pushed for rules that would grant a lifeline to as many CDM projects as possible when those negotiations took place at Cop25 in Madrid and Cop26 in Glasgow. But, since then, they have been conspicuously quiet on the topic.

Climate Home approached the respective carbon market authorities in the three countries but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Trishant Dev is a carbon market expert at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. He expects there will be “a lot of pressure on the Indian government to let projects through from the carbon industry, which is thriving in the country”.

But, at the same time, he thinks the government will take time to properly understand all the pros and cons of allowing such authorisations. “It’s a chaotic process. Countries want to make sense of what the final outcome of the article 6 discussions will be and how that will interact with domestic carbon markets they are constructing”, he said.

Who will buy the credits?

Article 6 talks collapsed at Cop28 last December after attempts led by the EU to introduce tighter controls and further integrity safeguards had been rebuffed by the US. Negotiators will try again this year to hammer out a deal on many technical issues that need to be resolved before trading of offsets can begin.

Meanwhile, questions also remain on who will be interested in using those credits, once the market is up and running. Countries, corporations and individuals could all be potential buyers.

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New Climate Institute’s Fearnehough said there doesn’t seem to be much appetite from countries based on what they are saying in public. “But it’s hard to predict what will happen when suddenly the offsets are available and you have an easy option to meet your NDC targets”, he added.

The credits may gain more interest from polluting companies. Banks, airlines and industrial heavyweights keep buying large volumes of questionable renewable energy offsets despite the known concerns, a Bloomberg investigation found. Dressing them up with the UN stamp of approval may add to the appeal.

Carbon Market Watch’s Crook believes much will depend on the transparency of the system – something still largely unknown. “If there is a very transparent register disclosing who purchased how many credits and for what purpose, that would disincentivize companies from transacting low-quality credits out of reputational fears,” he said. “But if it isn’t transparent, buyers may not be as careful with due diligence or may be even encouraged to buy bad credits since there won’t be scrutiny”.

A previous version of this article stated that projects requesting transition could provide 700 million tonnes of credits until 2035, while the correct figure is 1.4 billion tonnes. That was due to a computational error in the model used by NewClimate Institute for their analysis of which we were informed after publication.

The post Junk offset sellers push to enter new UN carbon market appeared first on Climate Home News.

Although it is fast emerging as a global leader on renewables, India’s continued coal dependency has raised many eyebrows in the global community.

But much of India, particularly the poorest parts of it, rely on coal for jobs, tax revenues and pensions.

Developed nations have eased their way out of coal, giving their coal regions time to adjust to their new economies. It’s only fair that India does the same.

But coal is the dirtiest energy source. To protect the climate and coal-reliant regions, India should keep investing in carbon capture technology, which can suck the emissions out from the smokestacks of its coal-fired power plants.

Coal reliance

Over two-thirds of India’s electricity comes from coal but it’s not just an energy source but a community resource.

A recent study found that nearly two-fifths of India’s districts are dependent on the coal sector in one form or another.

This includes districts where citizens who have been affected by mining get pensions from the government and where people work in the mining sector, either directly or indirectly.

Some of India’s poorer states like Assam, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh are heavily reliant on taxes from coal businesses.

State-owned company Coal India operates in 80 areas and has nearly a quarter of a million people working for it.

Transitioning away from coal too fast would be devastating for these people and these regions, many of whom are among the world’s poorest.

Renewables and CCS

India’s non-fossil fuel capacity has more than quadrupled over the last nine years and, with the cost of renewables falling, this trend looks set to continue.

That will be needed, as India’s total energy needs grow. Despite government claims, not everyone in the country even has access to electricity yet.

But renewables cause problems too. They are intermittent, they take up space that could be used for farming, they’re often far from the electricity’s consumers, grid improvements are expensive and they threaten nature.

Coal can help solve problems like intermittency – what to do when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Particularly as India’s energy storage options are currently limited. And carbon capture can make coal cleaner.

So it’s good that India is setting up two national centers for excellence and is providing government support for carbon capture projects.

The state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited are piloting the technology too, as are private firms like Dalmia Cement.

Carbon capture is not a long-term solution to decarbonisation. But it can drive a just transition with an ease that has been accessible to other countries over the years as they reduced their dependence on coal.

As India expands its energy mix to lunge towards a sustainable future, it is important to be reminded of the United Nations climate convention’s principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. We must picture each country’s own advantages in racing to the finish line.

Anusha Arif is a research associate at the Social Policy Research Foundation in New Delhi

The post Capturing coal’s carbon can ease pain of India’s energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, nineteen countries signed up to the India-led coalition. These included the United States and Brazil, the world’s top biofuel producers.

“India wanted to bring international attention to a subject important to them,” a source involved in the alliance’s creation told Climate Home News. “They thought this was a low-hanging fruit that countries had not talked about much and they could turn it into an international topic.”

The alliance pitches biofuels as key to the energy transition away from fossil fuels. But critics argue they could do more harm than good by diverting land away from other priority uses, fuelling deforestation and unleashing significant amounts of emissions across their supply chains.

What are biofuels?

Biofuels are any type of fuel derived from organic matter, whether plants, animal waste or algae. Most are liquid fuels used for transportation, typically blended in varying percentages with conventional fossil-based petrol or diesel.

Over 90% of liquid biofuels – bioethanol and biodiesel – are made from food crops, like corn, sugarcane, soybeans or vegetable oils, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)

In India, biofuel is synonymous with bioethanol derived from sugarcane, of which the country is one of the largest producers in the world.

Unlike Brazil or the United States, India has only recently become an influential player in the sector following the introduction of government policies and subsidies spurred by political calculations.

Appeasing farmers

Six years ago the Modi administration was facing a mounting problem in politically crucial states. Sugar overproduction and declining prices meant the country’s nearly 50 million sugarcane growers were not being paid in time by sugar mills, which collectively owed billions of dollars to farmers.

As tensions simmered to the surface, Modi made a promise: “I know there are cane dues. I will make sure every penny of yours will be paid.”

The government’s plan to ease the pressure on farmers was to divert increasing quantities of the crop from food supply chains to the production of bioethanol. It set a “remunerative” fixed price, facilitated loans and raised the bioethanol blending targets, driving up demand.

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As bioethanol is sold to oil companies, payments to sugar mills – and subsequently to farmers – quickened: down to 3 weeks from the minimum 3 months’s wait from the sale of sugar, according to the government.

Lydia Powell, an energy policy analyst at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, says India’s push for a biofuel alliance is mostly a “PR exercise” for the benefit of the agricultural sector which forms a “very strong lobby” in the country.

India’s biofuels pitch

India’s efforts to attract interest around an international coalition began in earnest at the start of 2023, when it took over the G20 presidency from Indonesia.

The prime targets were Brazil and the US, which as top producers were easily enticed, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions. “Convincing other countries to join took some time and it was a bit of a challenge,” they added.

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The coalition was originally meant to be announced at the G20 energy ministers’ meeting in Goa, but was delayed while India waited for more joiners. The big day came at the leaders’ summit in Delhi, when Modi flanked by Joe Biden and Lula da Silva unveiled the alliance of 19 countries, shortly after G20 countries had reached a compromise on the summit’s declaration.

According to Francis X Johnson, a biofuels expert at the Stockholm Environment Institute, countries had various motives to join the platform. “Argentina is an agricultural power and could develop its biofuel industry further,” he said. “The UAE has important connections to aviation and shipping where biofuels could play a particular role. Singapore is a trading hub. Poorer countries are keen to have technology transferred.”

Sustainability questions

What the alliance will do is not yet clear, with more work expected in the next few months to define its structure and targets.

Experts told Climate Home News that if it is to succeed the focus needs to be on sustainability.

The US Department of Energy told Climate Home News that “security, affordability, and sustainability will be core tenets of the alliance”.

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Biofuels are considered renewable energy sources because the materials used to produce them can be replenished, unlike fossil fuels. But that does not mean they are always clean or sustainable.

Comparison between biofuels demand and supply now and in a net zero by 2050 scenario, according to the International Energy Agency

As the overwhelming majority of biofuels continue to be produced from traditional crops like sugarcane, corn or vegetable oils, the question of how best to use limited land is sensitive. If it’s being used to produce energy crops, then it’s not being used to grow food or restore carbon-rich ecosystems.

Advanced biofuels made from waste or other sources like algae do not bring these land conflicts, but high production costs limit their scale.

Supply-chain emissions

The climate impact of biofuels has also come under sharp focus. To achieve their emission-cutting aims, they need to be less polluting by the fossil fuels they aim to replace. But specially grown crops require fertilizers and energy often produced with fossil fuels themselves, increasing their carbon footprint.

Barbara Smailagic, biofuels expert at Transport and Environment, says sustainability safeguards in the production of biofuels are “very weak”.  “There are several risks in driving up the production of biofuels: further increasing deforestation in crucial ecosystems and biodiversity loss, reinforcing human rights violations in producing countries, increasing our energy dependence on imports of these fuels,” she added.

Climate and environmental impact can vary hugely, depending on the species, location and management plan. For example, sugarcane production in India is very water-intensive, requiring on average 2,860 litres of water to produce one litre of bioethanol. But, when the same crop is grown in Brazil, the impact on water resources is less severe.

Francis X Johnson thinks it is critical to reduce the overall demand for fuels and energy through efficiency and mode-shifting because an increase in demand is “inherently unsustainable”.

“In this way, biofuels use can expand with lower impacts since the reduced demand would mean that fewer biofuels and less land would be needed to achieve the same emissions reductions”, he added. “And even though electrification of transport will grow, there will always be gaps to fill in sectors like aviation or shipping that cannot easily be electrified.”

The article was amended on 23/9 to clarify a comment made by Francis X Johnson.

The post Sugar rush: how farmers spurred India’s G20 biofuels alliance appeared first on Climate Home News.

With South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) already underway, they said at the summit in Germany that they were negotiating with Indonesia, Vietnam and India.

Since then, Indonesia and Vietnam have signed JETP deals — but not India. Experts familiar with the issue said that no Indian deal is expected in the near future.

Swati D’Souza, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said that for a number of reasons, “there is considerable resistance within India [to the JETP]”.

Those reasons include the JETP’s emphasis on phasing out coal, which is the mainstay of India’s energy mix, and the relatively small amount of financing involved, as well as the debt nature of that finance.

There is also scepticism about adding a new and parallel negotiation on climate funding, when old ones haven’t come to much, says D’Souza.

A distraction

At the UN climate talks, India has repeatedly but unsuccesfully urged wealthy countries like the G7 to fulfil their promise to provide $100 billion a year in funding for developing countries to help tackle and adapt to climate change.

Ultimately, the JETP is seen as a political statement that will be played as a win for G7 countries seeking to show they are helping developing nations wean off fossil fuels.

But it won't necessarily be seen as a win for India, especially ahead of national elections next year. “If India has to make a political declaration, what are the returns for it?” asks D’Souza.

A key obstacle appears to be the JETP’s emphasis on coal. The deals with South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam focused on transitioning energy systems away from coal power towards renewables.

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But India has long resisted deadlines for ending use of this fossil fuel - famously changing the phrase “phaseout” of coal to “phasedown” at the Cop26 talks at Glasgow.

No transition from coal

The government argues that coal is needed to meet the growing energy demands of its developing economy and the fuel is being unfairly singled out while the oil and gas on which developed nations rely are spared.

Santosh Agarwal, deputy director general of the ministry of coal, reiterated that position last month.

Delivering a lecture on the just transition, her first statement was: "As far as India is concerned, transition away from coal is not happening in the near future."

Coal provides more than 70% of India's electricity - a figure the government predicts will come down to 55% by 2030 as the share of renewables rises.

Because of India's growing population, economy and energy demand, a drop in the percentage doesn't mean using less coal in absolute terms. Agarwal said coal demand would rise by about 40% by 2030 and only peak in 2040.

India plans to produce more coal too to meet this rising demand. It has a target to increase coal production from 900 million tons to 1.5 billion tons by 2030.

Agarwal said there would be “no closure of mines because of just transition” and indeed "mega-mines" would open, creating jobs.

Independent analyses found there is potential to close some loss-making mines and some new coal power plants may be unneeded.

India has the second-largest plans to build coal plants in the world, after only China. Yet “many plants are under-utilised,” says Ashwini Swain, an analyst with the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

But the growth projections mean India won’t see job losses in coal in the near future, making funding to retrain coal workers unnecessary.

D’Souza also notes that most of the 13-20 million Indians working in coal and allied industries are informal workers who may not be covered by a JETP-style program.

Terms not attractive

Sandeep Pai is an energy analyst and director of Swaniti Initiative. He said that the size and type of funding on offer is an obstacle to a JETP for India.

The public money on offer was around $8.5 billion for South Africa, with similar amounts for Indonesia and Vietnam. Pai describes these figures as very small for a country of India's size.

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These are amounts that India can leverage from the  commercial markets on its own, said Pai. According to one estimate, India will need some $900 billion over 30 years to meet its renewable energy targets.

“The first six months or so [after the JETP negotiations last year], Indian stakeholders were trying to understand what the G7 was talking about,” Pai says, adding, “Now they understand, and we are not very interested.”

Much of the money on offer to South Africa and Indonesia has been in the form of loans not grants. This has proved controversial in both nations, with critics saying the governments are adding to the nations' debt piles.

Different JETP needed

Despite the hurdles though, the JETP process could be useful for India in stimulating a conversation around just transition, as it did in South Africa, says Pai.

And the recent addition of Senegal, which is not a major coal user compared to the other countries, suggests these partnerships don’t have to focus on coal.

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Instead, the focus could be on India’s own agenda of expanding renewable energy, says Swain. The country has committed to almost triple the amount of non-fossil fuel electric capacity from around 180 GW today to 500 GW by 2030.

Or it could look at how to offset some of the negative effects of coal. “If we recognise India’s reliance on coal for at least the next few decades, we can talk about how that coal can be cleaner, or finance for restoring ecology after a mine closure,” says Swain. “There has to be a separate model of JETP for India.”

The post Why India is rebuffing a coal-to-clean deal with rich nations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Following fraught negotiations, G20 countries clinched an agreement in India’s capital New Delhi on Saturday afternoon.

Raising the bar on climate targets was a priority of India’s G20 presidency, which had placed big stakes on the event’s success. Across Delhi, it was impossible to escape the gaze of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his face alongside motivational slogans on huge billboards.

His main negotiatior Amitabh Kant hailed the agreement as the “most ambitious document on climate action” so far, striking a triumphant figure during the press conference.

But deep fault lines remain on fossil fuels ahead of the Cop28 climate summit later this year.

Renewables breakthrough

The G20 member countries together account for over three-quarters of global emissions and gross domestic product, and a cumulative effort by the group to decarbonise is crucial in the global fight against climate change.

The big breakthrough was on renewables. The final text includes a commitment to “pursue and encourage efforts to triple renewable energy capacity” by 2030. That target is vital to keep the goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C within reach, according to the International Energy Agency.

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The European Union and the United Arab Emirates, the Cop28 hosts, have made it a centerpiece of their respective battle plans for the climate summit. When it was first announced, experts thought the pledge would find broad consensus. But at the G20 energy ministers’ meeting in July, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China blocked a deal.

One and half months later leaders broke the deadlock. It is welcome news for the Cop28 president-designate Sultan Al-Jaber, who said “the G20 has made important progress” and he was “grateful for the commitment made” on the renewable energy target.

Carbon-capture caveat

Getting the leaders to unite behind it in Delhi has come alongside concessions on other fronts. In the same paragraph, the declaration says G20 countries will “demonstrate similar ambition with respect to other zero and low-emission technologies, including abatement and removal technologies”.

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The language covers controversial carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, favoured by oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

CCS remains expensive and unproven at large scale. Many climate campaigners call it a “distraction” that gives fossil fuel companies a licence to keep extracting more climate-harming coal, oil and gas.

Phase-out failure

G20 leaders also failed to move the needle on commitments to phase out polluting fossil fuels. This was referred to as “indispensable” to achieve a net-zero goal by the United Nations climate body in the first Global Stocktake report published on Friday.

The Delhi declaration urges countries to accelerate “efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power”. That is a carbon copy of what leaders agreed at their previous meeting in Bali ten months ago, following a landmark deal on coal at the 2021 climate summit in Glasgow.

Madhura Joshi, an analyst at E3G, told Climate Home News the language “just maintains the status quo” and “bolder action” is needed from leaders. “Increasing renewables must be backed by phasing down fossil fuels – both are indispensable”, she added.

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The outcome is a disappointment for India which has been advocating for this pledge since Cop27 last year. India is still largely reliant on coal for its electricity generation, so it has been attempting to put equal pressure on producers of oil and gas.

In his speech, Sultan Al-Jaber said a fossil fuel phase out is “essential” and “inevitable”. The spotlight is now on his team’s attempts to bridge divisions and garner support for it on the road to Dubai.

The G20 leaders also called for a steep increase in climate finance, moving “from billions to trillions of dollars globally” to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. A key driver of the scale-up will be reforms of multilateral development banks, which – the G20 believes – could free up $200 billion over the next decade.

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The draft, if approved by the federal cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would make China the only major economy open to fresh requests to add significant new coal-fired capacity.

India and China account for about 80% of all active coal projects as most developing nations wind down capacity to meet climate targets. As of January 2023, only 20 countries have more than one coal project planned, according to E3G, an independent climate think tank.

“After months of deliberations, we have arrived at a conclusion that we would not need new coal additions apart from the ones already in pipeline,” one of three government sources said.

The sources declined to be identified as they are not authorised to speak to the media. India's power ministry did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Planned plants unaffected

The new policy, if approved, would not impact the 28 GW of coal-based power in various stages of construction, the sources said.

China and India have together been lobbying against an end date for the use of fossil fuels and at the Cop26 climate talks in 2021 weakened language on the transition away from coal.

India, whose proposed coal power capacity is the highest after China, had repeatedly refused to set a timeline to phase out coal, citing low per-capita emissions, surging renewable energy capacity and demand for inexpensive fuel sources.

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Coal is expected to be the dominant fuel in generating electricity in India for decades, but activists have pressed for a halt to new coal-fired plants, arguing this would at least help to reduce the share of the polluting fuel in overall power output.

The draft, India's first attempt at revising its electricity policy enacted in 2005, also proposes delaying the retirement of old coal-fired plants until energy storage for renewable power becomes financially viable, the sources said.

So far, old coal-fired power plants with a cumulative capacity of 13 GW have been earmarked for functioning post retirement deadline to meet high power demand, they said.

Change of heart

In the first draft of the NEP in 2021, India had said it may add new coal-fired capacity, though it proposed tighter technology standards to reduce pollution.

The Central Electricity Authority, an advisory body to the federal power ministry, had said last year India might have to add as much as 28 GW of new coal-fired power in addition to the plants under construction to address surging power demand.

However, the final draft, which will guide India's policymaking on energy over the next decade, features no references to new coal-fired power, the sources said.

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In contrast, China's National Development and Reform Commission said in a March 2022 document that outlined its energy policy, that the world's largest coal user "will rationally build advanced coal-fired power plants based on development needs."

China plans to build some 100 new coal-fired power plants to back up wind and solar capacity, which analysts said goes against Beijing's stated intention to reduce the role of coal.

The policy revision could also impact long-term coal prices and miners in Indonesia, Australia and South Africa, as India is the world's second-largest coal importer.

The post India mulls end to coal plant construction appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the announcement, Indian authorities included a focus on solar power from the Himalayan region of Ladakh and green hydrogen production.

Announcing her government’s annual budget today, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told parliament: “We are implementing many programmes for green fuel, green energy, green farming, green mobility, green buildings, and green equipment, and policies for efficient use of energy”.

“These green growth efforts help in reducing carbon intensity of the economy and provides for largescale green job opportunities,” she added.

The announcement comes after the US has approved a $500 billion green spending package to curb climate emissions and Japan layed out a plan to issue $150 billion in “green transition” bonds. The EU unveiled this month its own $270 billion plan to subsidize Europe’s green industry.

Despite its low per-person emissions, India’s huge population makes it the third-biggest emitter in the world. The country has pledged to reach net zero by 2070.

 Green electricity

The government promised to invest 350 billion rupees ($4.3 bn) in investments towards the country’s energy transition and its net zero target.

The petroleum and natural gas ministry will oversee investments, Sitharaman told a press conference, adding they would include investments in gas.

The government will subsidise private-sector projects for battery energy storage. This technology can store electricity from intermittent power sources like renewables so that it can be used when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.

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The government said it will also look into pumped storage, a way to store energy using hydropower. When electricity is abundant, it is used to pump water up into a dam. When demand surges, the water can be released, producing hydro-electricity.

Sitharaman pledged to invest 83 bn rupees ($1 bn) of central government money in electricity transmission lines which can take 13 gigawatts (GW) of renewable electricity from the sunny, sparsely-populated Himalayan mountain state of Ladakh to population centres in the rest of the country. India aims to develop 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030.

This echoes similar projects in neighbouring China, where renewable electricity is produced in the Gobi desert and transported to big cities in the east. In the US, construction has just started on a transmission line linking Arizona’s desert to California’s metropolises.

Green hydrogen

The budget touted the recently-launched national green hydrogen mission. The government will spend 197bn rupees ($2.4 bn) developing the carbon-free-fuel, which can replace fossil fuels in the manufacture of steel and in shipping and aviation.

Most of the money will be spent on incentives to produce hydrogen with renewable electricity and to build Indian electrolysers, the machines which turn water into hydrogen.

Sitharaman called green hydrogen a “sunrise sector” and said she wants India to “assume technology and market leadership” and reduce dependence on fossil fuel imports.

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India aims to produce five million metric tons by 2030. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that, for the world to limit global warming to 1.5C, it should produce about 100m metric tons of green hydrogen by 2030.

“The green hydrogen target is encouraging since it sends the right signals to the industry. We need to build the domestic capacity and supply chain on [renewable energy],” the IEA’s lead India analyst Swati D’Souza told Climate Home.

Adapting to climate change

Sitharaman announced money to adapt to the effects of climate change too. She promised 53bn rupees ($646m) to build irrigation systems for farming and  drinking water in the drought-prone region of Karnataka.

She promised to plant mangrove trees along India’s shorelines and to restore wetlands. These can suck in and lock up greenhouse gases and help reduce flooding.

But Climate Action Network campaigner Harjeet Singh said that while there were good emissions-cutting projects, adapting to climate change had been mostly left out.

In particular, he criticised the lack of a new allocation to the National Adaptation Fund. This was set up in 2015 and “has been starved of funds”, he said.

Mixed messages on transport

The government promised money to both clean and polluting transport forms. The railway budget was the highest it has ever been and Sitharaman said she would promote coastal shipping as an “energy efficient” way of moving people and goods.

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But she also promised to revive 50 airports, helipads or other types of landing grounds “to improve regional air connectivity”.

The Indian government is trying to build a domestic electric vehicle (EVs) industry. Sitharaman increased the custom duty on fully imported EVs from 60% to 70%.

At the same time, she increased spending on incentivising the manufacture of EVs in India and promised “adequate funds” to scrap old polluting government vehicles like ambulances.

The post India announces $4.3 billion investment in clean energy appeared first on Climate Home News.

“That’s how the new year began for more than 25,000 residents of the locality and me,” Parmar told Climate Home.

The Chamoli District Administration has declared 723 houses have cracks in them.

Fearing the sudden collapse of residential buildings and hotels, the government has declared the area a landslide subsidence zone. Families are being shifted to hotels, guest houses and government facilities.

Hydropower in the Himalayas

Joshimath was a disaster waiting to happen, says Anjal Prakash, a research director at the Indian School of Business who worked on a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the earth’s water and ice .

He said there are a number of reasons for the sinking, including the building of the Tapovan Vishnugad Hydropower Plant and the location of Joshimath on unstable glacier debris.

“The hydropower project’s tunnelling process that involved blasts punctured one of the underground reservoirs of water, known as aquifers, and gushing water destabilised houses,” said Prakash.

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He said locals had complained over the last few months about water sources, especially spring water sources, drying up whenever hydropower construction began in the area.

“Since tunnelling work disturbed aquifers, it also affected the water sources connected to it above the ground. It’s a simple logic,” Prakash said.

Going by residents’ complaints, aquifers must have started getting damaged three to four months before the houses started developing cracks, he estimated.

Building work on the same hydropower plant punctured an aquifer in 2009, leading to groundwater loss.

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The government has stopped the construction work of the hydropower project. But the state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation, which is constructing the plant, denied that its project is sinking houses in Joshimath.

“No tunnels pass underneath Joshimath, and no blasts were carried out recently,” the power company said in a brief press statement released on January 5.

The company has so far ignored calls for an independent probe or a study to ascertain the possibility of its hydropower tunnelling work causing cracks.

Warnings ignored

Scientists and engineers have long warned against development in this region.

In 1976, the Mishra Committee set up to probe the sinking of Joshimath town recommended a ban on heavy construction work in the area.

In 2010, two academics wrote an article headlined “disaster looms large over Joshimath”. They warned that “sudden outpouring of water from an aquifer will have multifarious impacts”.

In 2021, the hydropower plant itself was damaged when a glacier broke off, sending a wall of water and rocks down a mountain and  killing more than 200 people.

The Tapovan Visnugad hydroelectric power plant after it was damaged in 2021 (Photo: Irfan Rashid, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir)

In April 2022, a multi-agency report on this disaster recommended that there should be mandatory disaster impact assesments for hydropower projects, which are checked periodically.

Prakash said the government should develop other zero-carbon electricity sources like solar power or small-scale hydropower.

Hydropower plants (blue) are common in the Indian Himalayan states of Uttarkhand and Himachal Pradesh and in the neighbouring nation of Nepal. Coal is in black. (Photo: ResourceWatch)

Unrest and anger

Facing bitter cold and fearing the collapse of their homes, residents continuously protest against the government’s failure to announce short-term and long-term plans for the sinking town.

“[The government] have shifted us to a tiny hotel room, which is inadequate for my family of four, which includes two teenagers,” laments Parmar, a farmer by profession. “My two-floor home measures around 6,000 sq ft.”

Activists in Joshimath are urging the local administration to formulate a compensation package for people whose houses would be demolished.

People are getting restless as the district administration has failed to come up with a detailed plan to relocate affected families, says Atul Sati, a local activist.

“They are disrupting traffic, protesting and not letting disaster management teams demolish infrastructures that can collapse anytime,” he said. The government should provide monetary compensation and a plan for settlement before the situation becomes explosive.”

He added: “There should be an investigation into the role of NTPC’s project in the Joshimath tragedy. And policy makers and engineers who have put people’s lives in danger should be held accountable for their actions.”

The post Sinking town exposes perils of Himalayan hydropower appeared first on Climate Home News.

Inderpal Singh, 66, grows sugarcane over 2.5 acres in Bhatipura village, Uttar Pradesh. He supplies it to the local sugar mill, Nanglamal Sugar Complex.

Nanglamal Sugar Complex is owned by Mawana Sugars, one of India’s largest manufacturers. It supplies sugar to multinational companies including Nestlé, Coca Cola and Pepsi.

Singh used to almost harvest 90,000kg of cane in a typical season. This year it will be closer to 70,000kg. He told Climate Home droughts, floods and heatwaves in Uttar Pradesh make his livelihood increasingly precarious.

“No one comes to our help. Neither the mills nor the government,” Singh said.

Some farmers take out insurance against pest damage and weather extremes, but can only claim when a majority of the crop is damaged. Government-promised compensation for climate-related losses, Singh said, is “largely not effective”.

Climate Home News travelled to Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to investigate the plight of workers in the industry. These two states account for 71% of the country’s sugar exports, which could end up in cans of Diet Coke, KitKat chocolate bars and Häagen-Dazs ice cream tubs sold around the world.

Smallholders like Singh told Climate Home that they felt abandoned and exploited. While the government sets a minimum price per quintal (100kg) of raw sugarcane, erratic yields, changing quality demands and late payments strain their finances.

Climate Home News invited Nestlé, Coca Cola, Pepsi and Mawana Sugars to comment on these concerns and explain how they looked after the welfare of suppliers. At time of publication, they had not responded.

A sugarcane field in Lakhimpur, Uttar Pradesh

Sugar boom

India is the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugar, and second largest exporter after Brazil.  The Indian government described last year as a “watershed season” for sugar production. The country produced a record 35.9 million tonnes of sugar and exported a record 11 million tonnes to more than two dozen countries. The major importers of Indian sugar were Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sudan, and the UAE. Indian sugar also went to the EU, US, Singapore, and Australia.

Consumer goods firms are doing good business. Nestlé India reported post-tax profits of over 2,000 crore rupees ($250 million) in 2021. Coca Cola and Pepsi are not publically listed companies in India but, according to business intelligence platform Tofler, each reaped operating revenue of more than $60m.

Climate Home traced the supply chain of sugarcane grown at farms in Nanglamal village in Uttar Pradesh to mills owned by Mawana Sugars, one of Nestlé’s main sugar suppliers in India.

Mawana Sugars is India’s sixth largest sugar manufacturer, operating two mills in Uttar Pradesh. Mills are critical to the sugar supply chain. They procure and process the harvest from the fields, then send the resulting sweeteners to buyers including the government.

‘Responsible sourcing’

Nestlé, a Swiss multinational that owns brands including KitKat, Smarties and Häagen-Dazs, procured sugar in 2019 from two Indian mills in Uttar Pradesh, including Nanglamal mill which is owned by Mawana Sugars, according to its sugar supply chain disclosure, published in April 2020.

Nestlé claims to follow responsible sourcing principles, which include the provision of safe and healthy workplaces and a ban on forced or child labour. The company states on its website that it only works with farms that “meet at least legal or mandatory industry standards” for workers’ pay and conditions.

Coca Cola says it follows the principles for sustainable agriculture, with an emphasis on prohibiting child labour and abuse of labour and ensuring a healthy and safe working environment. Pepsi says it follows a positive agriculture agenda under which it is trying to source crops and ingredients in a way that accelerates regenerative agriculture and strengthens farming communities.

Climate Home did not find any child or forced labour in farms linked to Mawana Sugars and its customers. The investigation did identify poor working conditions and low pay, however, which made suppliers vulnerable to climate-related losses.

Smallholders told Climate Home that Nanglamal Sugar Complex delays payment, makes unreasonable demands and offers no protection from extreme weather impacts. This traps them a vicious cycle of loss and debt, they said.

Unaffordable seeds

The dominant variety of sugarcane has become prone to pests that thrive under rising temperatures. Mills such as Nanglamal are encouraging farmers to grow new varieties, said Nawab Singh Ahlawat, district president of Bharatiya Kisan Union Arajnaitik, which represents many sugarcane farmers in Uttar Pradesh. But seeds for better varieties cost 3-5 times more, around 2-3,000 rupees ($24) for 100kg. “Only a few farmers can afford it,” said Ahlawat.

“They do not give good prices for [the] old varieties,” said Singh. “They want farmers to sow early and to sow new varieties but they do not give us (sufficient) seeds.”

“Mills don’t help the farmers,” said Omvir Singh Tomar, 65, a Nanglamal resident who supplies to Mawana. He lost 15-20% of his harvest to heavy rainfall in September and October. “No one will pay for this damage,” he said.

Then the Naglamal Sugar Complex was slow to procure Tomar’s surviving crop, he said. “So far, only 10,000-12,500 kg of my sugarcane has gone to the mill… I shudder at the thought that the remaining 70,000-80,000kg of sugarcane may stretch to April or May 2023.”

Unlike some milling companies, Mawana had not invested in healthcare or education facilities for sugarcane workers and their families, Tomar said.

Climate impacts are creating dangerous working conditions for India’s sugar workers and pushing them further into debt

Late payments

A common complaint among farmers supplying sugarcane to Nanglamal is that they are not paid on time, which pushes them into debt.

Tomar said Nanglamal Sugar Complex once paid him nearly a year late. He resorted to selling land to pay for his daughter’s marriage. Smallholders like him are investing more and more in fertilisers, pesticides, better seed varieties and diesel for their irrigation pumps “but the rate of sugarcane and our income are not increasing in the same proportion,” said Tomar.

Ahlawat said several sugar mills in the Meerut area owe farmers money. “Until last year Mawana Sugars also used to delay the payment,” he said, sometimes by months. The delays have not been as long this year, but farmers are still not being paid within 14 days, which according to the Uttar Pradesh Sugarcane Supply Act is mandatory, he added. If mills do not meet this deadline, they are liable for interest of 15% a year on the overdue sum.

VM Singh, the national convener of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, has been fighting for 25 years to get sugarcane farmers paid on time. Many mills in Uttar Pradesh owe several hundred crores of rupees (millions of dollars) to farmers, he told Climate Home. “The money that had to be paid to farmers is pending. Some owe money from last year too.”

‘Exploitation breeds exploitation’

Uttar Pradesh officials are trying to tighten the rules so farmers get paid for sugarcane within 10 days of supplying it. Under its Panchamrut scheme, the state government aims to double farmers’ incomes with initiatives to diversify into other crops, introduce drip irrigation and efficient sowing methods.

Kulveer Singh, a 62-year-old farmer from Seohara village in Uttar Pradesh Bijnor’s district, told Climate Home these were empty promises. “To my knowledge no farmer has benefitted from these schemes,” he said.

The Indian government claims that “timely payment and low carrying cost of stocks for sugar mills resulted in early clearance of cane arrears of farmers” last season. Observers told Climate Home that this is not the reality on the ground.

“Farmers are not paid on time. This sometimes translates into farmers not being able to clear their dues to others, including labourers. All this together leads to issues in the whole supply chain. It is like a vicious cycle. To put it briefly exploitation breeds exploitation,” said Abhishek Jani, chief executive of Fairtrade India.

On the way forward, Jani said, “brands need to take action in their entire supply chain. For instance, in the case of cocoa from the African region, a programme has been created and consumers in Europe are willing to pay extra for sustainable and ethically sourced cocoa. On sugar, we are far from that right now but there is a huge need for it,”  he said.

Deepak Guptara of the Uttar Pradesh Sugar Mill Association said no labour or human rights were violated during the production of sugar in the state.

Welfare board

So what is being done to improve the welfare of sugar farmers, in the face of climate threats?

In Uttar Pradesh, there is no specific scheme in place to protect the welfare of workers in sugarcane fields.

In 2019, the Maharashtra government established a welfare board for sugarcane workers to provide them with social security benefits and insurance and improve their overall standard of living.

Shekhar Gaikwad, Maharashtra’s sugar commissioner, told Climate Home that a corporation was initiated in November “for the welfare of farmers under which sugar mill owners and Maharashtra government will put money.” To date the government has paid in 40 crore rupees ($4.8m). The target is $30m.

Maharashtra is the first state to set up such a scheme for migrant workers, said Gaikwad. “Registration of labourers under the corporation has started. As of now, 200,000 farmers from the Beed district of Maharashtra have been registered,” he said.

‘Not functional yet’

But farmers told Climate Home they did not know anyone who had been registered under the programme.

The government scheme was meant to provide sugar workers with insurance, financial assistance and medical aid. Registration would be the first step to access these benefits, according to Raju Shetti, a former member of India’s parliament and president of Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, a group that works for the rights of farmers.

But, Shetti said, “all these plans have just been in the air.”

Sunil Munde a small labour contractor from Ambajogai in Maharashtra, told Climate Home that the scheme “is not functional yet”. He manages 16 labourers and none of them are registered. “There are no funds in it,” he said. “The scheme has not yet been implemented on the ground.”

18-year-old Dhanvir Kumar, of Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh, labours on his family farm alongside studying at school. His family income cannot keep up with rising costs of living, he said. “We grow sugar but can’t afford to buy sugar. Drinking tea with sugar is like a crime.”

Reporting by Mayank Aggarwal, Arvind Shukla and Isabelle Gerretsen. Photography by Meenal Upreti. Data visualisation by Gurman Bhatia. The Pulitzer Center supported this project with a reporting grant as part of its Your Work/Environment initiative.

The post Cost of a KitKat: Big brands leave sugar farmers at the mercy of climate extremes appeared first on Climate Home News.

15-year-old Meera Gaikwad*, who is six months pregnant, knows her life will change forever when she moves 100km to cut sugarcane in Karnataka this season. There is no work at her drought-prone home of Paargaon, a small village in western India’s Maharashtra state.

Gaikwad told Climate Home News that she is afraid she will have to deliver her baby in a hut next to the fields, without access to medical care.

Thousands of girls like Gaikwad migrate from their villages every year to join in the sugarcane harvest from October until April. In total, more than 1.5 million workers leave their homes for the sugarcane fields.

Climate impacts, in particular heatwaves, droughts and floods, are worsening their plight. Women, some of whom are pregnant, cut and package sugarcane in temperatures of up to 46C.

In August and September, Climate Home travelled to the states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, where most of India’s sugarcane is grown and manufactured. Reporters found women and girls working in in dangerous conditions for up to 18 hours a day, without access to health or sanitation facilities.

Climate Home spoke to dozens of women who have had their wombs surgically removed, in the misguided belief it would help them to cope with the intensive workload.

Thousands of young girls and women migrate from Maharashtra’s drought-prone Beed district each year to harvest sugarcane

Double shift

Climate change is aggravating an already dire situation for women in Maharashtra’s drought-prone Beed district, where farming grinds to a halt for almost eight months due to a lack of rainfall. The region suffered from droughts in four separate years between 2010-2019, according to a government report.

Sugarcane cutting is physically demanding. Women work the fields in all weathers, they told Climate Home – and are also expected to do the heavy lifting at home.

Typically, they wake up at around 3am, two hours before the men, to fetch water and carry out domestic work before heading to the fields at 6-7am. After returning home in the evening or late at night, the women cook dinner for the family and finish off other tasks, such as cleaning and washing clothes.

“The men get some rest, but the women don’t,” said Arundhati Patil, executive member of Marathwada Navnirman Lokayat, an organisation working on socio-economic issues in Beed.

A 2020 study by researchers of Pune-based Symbiosis International University concluded that the working and living conditions of these women “violate basic human rights”. They have to bend for hours, pick up very heavy cane bundles and mount them at risky heights, sometimes in complete darkness at night.

Inadequate healthcare

Many women, like Gaikwad, carry out this backbreaking work while pregnant. They work in all weathers right up until their delivery.

20-year-old Anisha Sharad Bhavale, from Koyal village in Maharashtra, gave birth in a hut near a sugarcane field in 2020. Her baby boy died two weeks later. The nearest hospital was 30km away.

She had borrowed 70,000 rupees ($840) from a labour contractor for her son’s medical care. A week after the birth, she was back at work to start paying it off.

A teenage girl sits on a suitcase in her family’s hut near the sugar fields in Beed, Maharashtra

The unsafe working conditions in the sugar fields also sometimes result in miscarriages. One of Bhavale’s relatives was six weeks pregnant when she tripped and fell into a hole, which led to a miscarriage. Her husband, Sharad Bhavale, said there was no vehicle available to take her to the hospital or a nearby healthcare facility where she could have treatment.

The lack of healthcare and sanitation facilities is a major concern, Patil said. “There is no provision of medicines or doctors that can address their issues.”

A 2020 report by Oxfam India said “public health facilities at the villages are inadequate to address [women’s] ailments”, making medical treatments “impossible”, and prolonging any illnesses they suffer from.

Constant harassment

Gaikwad was married two years ago, when she was just 13. She became pregnant earlier this year. “Until we have a baby, we are considered young and poachable, even after we are married. That is why, we try to become mothers as soon as we are married — to avoid any disgrace to our family,” she said.

Thousands of girls are forced to marry by their parents soon after they start having their period – between 12-15 years of age. According to social activists, parents insist on this to ensure their daughters’ safety and because couples are hired more easily and earn more money in the sugarcane fields.

Thousands of young Indian girls like Meera Gaikwad* migrate from their villages every year, to work as labourers harvesting sugarcane

During their early teenage years, many girls also start working in the fields, said Mahadev Chunche, associate professor at the Kumbhalkar College of Social Work in Wardha, Maharashtra. This is partly to avoid them staying behind at labour tent camps, where parents fear they will be abused and harassed by men, he said.

“If a girl is good at cutting sugarcane, she starts getting a lot of marriage proposals. Single men are on the lookout for life partners as couples get a better advance for working in the fields,” Chunche told Climate Home News. “Marriage [eligibility] is mostly dependent on a girl’s skill in the field rather than her education or how she looks.”

A married couple receives a higher amount as an advance for cutting sugarcane – in the range of 150,000 to 300,000 rupees ($1,800-3,600), whereas a single woman is paid 50,000 to 150,00 rupees ($600-$1,800).

Abuse goes unreported

Sexual harassment and abuse are rife in the sugar fields, the investigation revealed. More than a dozen women and girls told Climate Home, on the condition of anonymity, that they had suffered or witnessed abuse.

“When I stay back in the tent and my parents go to the sugarcane fields, sometimes men come to the hut and say bad things… and harass us. They come when they see I’m alone at home… I feel scared,” a 20-year-old widow, who has one child, told Climate Home.

According to a study by Symbiosis International University in Pune, India, “physical abuse and rapes [by male contractors at the worksite] happen quite often though they are not formally reported”.

Chunche spoke to more than 400 women in Maharashtra for his PhD on India’s sugar labourers, seen by Climate Home News. He said that almost 80% of them told him they faced sexual harassment, were molested or raped by male sugar labourers, drivers and middlemen.

“Usually no one says anything or files a complaint,” Chunche told Climate Home News. “Sometimes the pressure is from the labour contractors not to speak but the main reason is their poverty. They fear that if they report [the abuse], it will bring disrepute, they will get no more work and there will be no one to marry them.”

Whenever such an incident happens, parents view it as a disgrace to the family and choose to marry their daughter off at a very young age, said Gaikwad.

In many cases, teenage girls don’t complain about sexual harassment as they are scared that they will lose their chance of going to school and be forced to sit at home, she said.

The working and living conditions of women working in India’s sugar fields “violate basic human rights,” researchers say.

Choosing hysterectomy

Women working in the sugar industry endure daily pain, as they lift 20-40 kg sugarcane bundles on their heads, including while pregnant or suffering from menstrual cramps.

“When women work long (15-18) hours or they squat in agriculture fields or when they lift heavy weights, they can develop abdominal pain,” said Himani Negi, a Delhi-based gynaecologist who runs a women’s care clinic.

To escape this constant pain, many women choose to have their womb removed. The practice has been prevalent among sugar workers for years. Women in Maharashtra’s Beed district were twice as likely as the state average to have had a hysterectomy, according to analysis of official data by Climate Home News.

In many villages in Ambajogai, a division of Beed district, at least 50-60 hysterectomy cases have been recorded over the past two decades, according to Patil.

Ishmala Raghu Patwade, who is in her mid-40s and has several children, told Climate Home News that she had a hysterectomy three months ago.

“My stomach was hurting. I was going through a lot of pain. My uterus had developed knots because of working in the fields. It had to be removed,” she said. Other women recommended the surgery to relieve her pain.

But the operation didn’t help her. Since having it, she can no longer work or lift any heavy items. As a result, the sole earner of the family now has to sit at home. Her husband Raghu used to also work in the sugarcane fields but stopped five years ago after he got severely injured working in the field.

Misinformation and complications

In 2019, a report by the Maharashtra government found that over 13,800 women (about 16% of the 82,300 surveyed) involved in harvesting sugarcane from the Beed districts had their womb removed in the last 10 years. Most of these women were in the 35-40 age group.

According to a report by the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, one of the main reasons women choose to have surgery is to avoid losing wages when pain prevents them from working.

Dr Nitin Chate, associate professor at the Swami Ramanand Tirth Rural Government Medical College in Beed, who comes from a family of sugarcane labourers, blamed misinformation.

“Poverty and illiteracy are two devils,” said Chate. “Due to poor awareness, women choose hysterectomies. After this surgery, many women face a disease called osteoporosis, which is related to weak bones.”

Ishmala Raghu Patwade chose to have a hysterectomy after other women told her it would relieve her abdominal pain

Other common complications include vaginal prolapse, back pain, poor balance and urinary incontinence. “Women should be made aware that this surgery won’t address their pain,” said gynaecologist Negi.

Gaikwad told Climate Home it was her dream to go to university, but she has accepted her reality. “We cut sugarcane, no matter what. Whether there’s sweltering heat, frigid cold, or even if the sugarcane fields are flooded with rain, we have to work in the field to cut the sugarcane. There’s no other option,” she said.

“Do girls like me not deserve any justice?”

*Meera Gaikwad is not the subject’s real name, to protect her identity as a minor.

Reporting by Meenal Upreti, Mayank Aggarwal and Arvind Shukla. Photography by Meenal Upreti. Data visualisation by Gurman Bhatia. The Pulitzer Center supported this project with a reporting grant as part of its Your Work/Environment initiative.

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Karan Gautam Wavhale, 20, wanted to join the Indian Army, but it was not to be. Instead, he became a labourer, travelling over 200km from his home in Koyal, in Maharashtra’s Beed district, to toil in the sugar fields of Karnataka.

He is one of millions who migrate with the sugar season each year. Heatwaves, drought and floods brought by climate change make the working conditions increasingly harsh. And when yields are low, many workers get trapped with debts they cannot repay.

“It is about survival,” Wavhale told Climate Home News. “Due to water shortages several months each year, there is just no work for us here… there is no option for us but to migrate.

“It is not just the story of our village. There are dozens of villages like ours.”

Climate Home News visited Koyal, about 450km from India’s financial capital Mumbai, in August. The villagers were preparing for the upcoming sugarcane harvest season in October. Here, climate change is worsening the already harsh conditions for workers.

Most of the village’s 2,500 people travel to neighbouring states Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh or western Maharashtra for seasonal work in sugarcane fields. There are no other jobs for them in Koyal and many residents hold government-issued Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards.

India is the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugar and the second-largest exporter. 50 million farmers are involved in India’s sugar industry, cultivating sugarcane in an area spanning almost five million hectares (50,000 sq km).

According to the Indian government, during last year’s sugar season more than 500 million metric tonnes of sugarcane were produced in the country. It is a record that the government is celebrating, but it comes at a high cost to vulnerable migrant labourers.

Almost half a million labourers migrate from Maharashtra’s Beed district each year to work in the sugarcane fields

Scorching heat

More and more, these migrants have to work in scorching heat – temperatures exceeded 46C in Maharashtra in April. This takes a severe toll on their physical and mental health, leading to extreme fatigue, anaemia and joint problems as well as depression and anxiety, according to a report by Oxfam India.

Workers prepare the fields, sow seeds, irrigate the crops, cut them with sickles and load the cane onto tractors for transport to the sugar mills in the region. The days last between 13 and 16 hours, over a 4-5 month season.

Sampat Lakshman, a 49-year-old migrant labourer, told Climate Home News that he and his colleagues work day and night during the sugarcane harvest season.

“If we cut the sugarcane during the day, we have to stay till late at night to load it in [the] trucks. There’s no timetable of any sort… there’s no time to get tired,” said Lakshman.

Sampat Lakshman, a sugarcane labourer from Beed district in Maharashtra, lives in a tiny hut with his wife and five children

Debilitating accidents

Labourers are frequently injured by a misplaced machete, heavy load or vehicle accident. Snake bites are common. In extreme cases, some suffer permanent disability, amputation or even death.

Wavhale’s younger brother Sachin was killed in a devastating vehicle collision in 2021.

“We were returning home in a vehicle which ferries workers. The driver tried to avoid an accident. [Because of this] several people fell off the vehicle… when the driver reversed the car, the vehicle crushed my brother’s head,” Wavhale told Climate Home. Sachin’s name was scribbled on the wall of his small, poorly lit home in Koyal.

“Several people suffered injuries in the accident, three people including my brother died on the spot,” he said. “One died a few months later due to injuries.”

Raghu Govind Patwade of Beed district suffered spinal injuries in 2016 when a tyre of a tractor trolley drove over him while he was resting in a sugarcane field in Karnataka. Although he survived, it has not been possible for him to work since then.

“I suffered multiple fractures including one on my hip. Since then, I have been bedridden. I can’t work now and I am stuck at home. I have a bag attached to pass urine,” he told Climate Home News.

“There are deep-rooted concerns in the way the [sugar industry] functions, regarding human rights violations, migrant labour and the living conditions [of labourers], child labour and child marriages, and women’s rights,” said Pooja Adhikari, Business Global Coordinator, Global Value Chains at Oxfam Germany, who has carried out extensive research into the industry.

Minimal facilities

The labourers in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh told Climate Home that when they work in the fields there are hardly any facilities for them, whether it is food, water, toilets, healthcare or electricity.

The sugar mill provides some materials for makeshift shelters from rainfall, extreme heat or cold, Lakshman said. Their earnings are “not enough to fill the stomach but only to ensure that we don’t starve”.

According to the report by Oxfam India, “the tents are small and inadequate to give complete shelter” and “do not have water, electricity supply or toilets.”

A sugarcane labourer plants sugarcane cuttings in Satara district of Maharashtra.

Missed schooling

In Maharashtra around 1.5 million people migrate each year with their children, according to Oxfam. Of those, nearly 500,000 migrate from Beed district, the hiring hub for cane cutters.

Migrant labourers are integral to sugarcane harvesting, Mantare Hanuman, a social activist in Maharashtra, told Climate Home News. “It is labour-intensive work… it requires labour at every step, whether it is sowing or harvesting,” he said. Machines are expensive and rarely used.

During the dry season in Beed district, from November to May, villages face severe seasonal unemployment. Wavhale, who left school when he was 15, said nobody wants to stay behind and work in the fields in Koyal, because they are paid close to nothing – a mere $1-2 per day.

Once the labourers migrate, their villages are left deserted. About 200,000 children younger than 14 accompany their parents during the cutting season and live with them in temporary huts, missing school.

“I know that their education suffers but I have no option but to take them with us,” said Lata Chandrasen Patole, a resident of Paargaon in Beed district. “There is no one else to take care of [them], [provide them with] food and [look out for their] safety.”

Hanuman said parents fear their daughters will face physical and sexual abuse if they are left behind. Many children drop out of school altogether at a young age and join their parents in the fields, he said.

The children of labourers miss school for months at a time when their parents migrate to work in the sugar fields

Debt trap

The migrant labourers and their families rely on credit to get through the year. They borrow money from labour contractors, known as mukadams, who play an integral role in India’s sugar industry. Mukadams act as the middlemen between labourers, farmers and sugar mills.

Mukadams help labourers find work on the fields and offer informal credit for displacement and living costs, under strict conditions. They hire labourers, usually as married couples, through informal contracts and pay them in instalments.

Labourers negotiate payment based on their personal situation: medical needs, whether they are married and how many children they have. An advance is then paid, usually to the men, based on the amount of crop to be harvested by the couple. If crops are destroyed by floods or heatwaves, their advance (and final payment) is lower.

“Once that happens they get trapped in a vicious cycle of debt, due to high interest rates, and their condition is akin to those of slaves. There is no one to listen to them,” said Yogesh Pande, an independent advocate for the welfare of sugar farmers.

The mukadams control who gets paid and when. After his accident, Patwade was supposed to receive compensation from the sugar mill to help pay for hospitals. “But I never got it. It was siphoned off by the mukadam,” he said.

The money Lakshman and his three relatives earn in the fields is not enough to feed their family of seven. “That is why we have to rely on [the] advance from contractors… We have to repay our debt,” he said. His debt stands at 100,000 rupees ($1,200).

The home of sugarcane labourer Karan Wavhale, in Beed district, Maharashtra

High interest rates

Mukadams typically provide loans to labourers at 50-60% interest rates, compared to the lower interest rates of 5-10% provided by banks, said Raju Shetti, a former member of India’s parliament and president of Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, an advocacy group for farmers and labourers.  “They make money while everyone else loses,” Shetti said.  

The fall in harvest yields means many labourers are unable to repay their loans to the mukadams. To make up the shortfall, they have to return for the next season or bring more relatives to work. “If this becomes a regular feature, they will be stuck in a cycle of heavy interest and debt,” said Mahadev Chunche, associate professor at the Kumbhalkar College of Social Work in Maharashtra.

One mukadam, who spoke to Climate Home on the condition of anonymity, dismissed claims of exploitation. He said it is labourers who take excess money in advance, spend it on alcohol and then cry foul.

“In fact, mill owners give us very little in advance and ask contractors like me to bring labourers,” he said. “Now labourers want their money in advance to secure their season while I only get paid at the end of the season. To ensure a steady supply of labourers I have to take money with heavy interest. How can I be blamed?”

In the meantime, labourers like Wavahle continue to toil in the sugar fields in harsh conditions. “Extreme heat or harsh winter cold is a reality for me but I have to work to survive,” he said.

Reporting by Mayank Aggarwal and Arvind Shukla. Photography by Meenal Upreti. The Pulitzer Center supported this project with a reporting grant as part of its Your Work/Environment initiative.

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“I won’t ever recover what I invested,” said 67-year-old Kalua Mehmood, a sugarcane farmer in Shahabpur, a village in western Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. Due to scarce rainfall, his sugarcane farm will deliver a poor harvest this year.

The rainfall during the monsoon season, between June and September, was erratic this year, he told Climate Home News. 10 years ago, farmers could count on steady rainfall. “But this year I have already irrigated my crop 10 times with a tube well [diesel pump] and even now the sugarcane has no juice,” Mehmood said, showing its stunted growth and dry yellow leaves.

Mehmood is one of millions of Indian sugarcane farmers who is suffering the onslaught of climate change. More intense and longer droughts and floods, caused by climate change, are destroying sugarcane crops and plunging millions of farmers and their families into debt, while creating dangerous working conditions. In August and September, Climate Home travelled to Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, to hear their stories.

India’s most valuable crop

India is the largest consumer and producer of sugar in the world. Sugarcane is a critical crop for the economy; it accounts for about 10% of the country’s agricultural output and the livelihoods of 50 million farmers and their dependents.

“It is no secret how important sugarcane is to India,” said Devinder Sharma, an independent food and agriculture expert. Further expansion of the sugar industry “needs to be discouraged,” said Sharma. “It is taking too much water.” The crop needs about 2,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of sugar.

“There is just no reason for us to continue pushing for sugarcane when we have options like corn syrup available,” said Sharma. “Rather than looking at adaptation measures, we need to prepare a package to take farmers away from the sugarcane cultivation.”

A tractor ploughs a sugarcane field in Hardoi district, Uttar Pradesh. 

Climate impacts

The industry is feeling the impacts of climate change, Mahesh Palawat, vice president of Skymet Weather, a private weather forecaster in India, told Climate Home.

In 2022, India suffered an extreme heatwave and recorded the hottest March in the last 122 years. Maharashtra recorded temperatures of over 46C and in Banda district in Uttar Pradesh temperatures reached 49C. According to a Lancet report, heat-related deaths of people over 65 years increased by 55% in India from 2000-2004 to 2017-2021.

Following the heatwave, Maharashtra experienced heavy downpours [in July and October], which damaged many sugarcane crops, Palawat said. In Uttar Pradesh, there were drought-like conditions until mid-September and “then we suddenly had heavy rain.”

Maharashtra experienced a sixfold increase in floods between 1970 and 2019, according to a report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a Delhi-based think tank.

“Agriculture requires stable weather… these episodes of extreme weather events are harmful,” said Palawat. “What this can result in is that we may have a bumper crop in one region in a particular year but that can quickly change in the next year due to unpredictable weather.”

Intense heat or extreme cold deteriorates the quality of the sugarcane juice and the overall quality of the final sugar product, according to a government report. Temperatures exceeding 35C-40C stunt the growth of the sugarcane crop and reduce the overall yield, according to a 2016 study.

Despite these climate challenges, sugarcane is still considered a better bet than other crops. According to a government report, the net return on cultivating sugarcane is 200–250% higher than for cotton or wheat.

Not enough water

Between May and September 2022, very little rain fell on Uttar Pradesh.

When Climate Home visited Shahabpur in Uttar Pradesh in September, it had just rained for the first time in 40 days. Farm owner Firasut Ali said the area only saw three proper rain spells during the entire monsoon season.

250km away in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district, Ammar Zaidi, a former banker, said that when he started farming in 2014, he was able to secure 40,000-42,500kg of crop per acre. But in the last two years, this has shrunk to about 30,000-36,000kg per acre due to heatwaves. “We are in the thick of the monsoon season but if you touch the ground all you can feel is dust.”

Sitting in his sugarcane field, Zaidi showed Climate Home his diseased sugarcane crop. According to Bharat Rachkar, from the Central Sugarcane Research Station in Maharashtra, when temperatures exceed 40C, “we see the problem of bugs and parasites in the stem”.  When temperatures drop below 25C, germination is also affected.

“I have calculated all my inputs and my overall costs. At the end of the day, I am not getting the return [on investment] I need to survive in this profession,” said Zaidi. “If I started making a balance sheet, I would be in the negative every year.”

“For every investment of 100,000 rupees ($1,230), a farmer is only able to secure 90,000 rupees ($1,100),” he said.

“Why am I still doing this? It is probably because like many others in my area my family has been connected to this land and farming for ages. I can’t just leave.”

Labourers prepare sugarcane fields in Sangli district, Maharashtra

Broken dreams

Diljinder Singh, who lives in the village Sheetlapur in Uttar Pradesh, told Climate Home News that he has many broken dreams. He used to work for Jet Airways and live in Gurugram, the swanky neighbouring city of Delhi.

In 2012, he left his job and returned to his village, where his family owns land, to run a sugarcane farm. His parents warned against it. Singh believed that with better sowing and irrigation methods, he could farm in a more productive way. But his harvests languished.

“The whole pattern is disturbed,” Singh said. “About 5-7 years ago, we used to get good rainfall and we didn’t require irrigation but today people are dependent on diesel-run generators to irrigate their fields.”

Too much water

Heat isn’t the only problem. In late September, heavy downpours hit Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, damaging 2.3 million hectares (23,000 sq km) of crops, including sugarcane. When heavy rains like this hits, it leads to waterlogged soil which impacts the germination process and stunts the root development, said Rachkar.

“I was born in 1989 and until 2006 I had never seen floods in my region. Since then I have seen [floods] three times,” said Ankush Churmule, a farmer whose family has been involved in sugarcane farming for 50 years.

“Areas of western Maharashtra, where the sugarcane is grown near the river, are facing a lot of impact due to successive floods. In those areas, the farmers are moving to bamboo,” said Rahul Ramesh Patil, president of the Weather Literacy Forum, a group that raises awareness about changing weather patterns.

A farmer removes weeds from floodwater in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra, India

The poor harvests caused by excess flooding also impact people with associated livelihoods such as rearing bulls or transporting goods. Kiran Shamrao, who rears bulls for sugarcane farming in Maharashtra, told Climate Home that flooding had severely reduced his profits.

“Our life runs on the bulls. Before, there was little rain, so we had some work for the bulls. But now, because of so much rain, the bulls don’t have work anymore, and we are at a loss,” he said.

Price guaranteed, timing not

If these regions are so prone to droughts and floods, then why do farmers continue to grow sugarcane? The simple answer is that sugarcane fetches them an assured price as it is regulated by the government, unlike other crops such as cotton and soy beans.

“From production to export, every part of the sugar industry is regulated in India. Farmers have an assured buyer and price and they know every last cane will be purchased,” said Sonjoy Mohanty, director of the Indian Sugar Mills Association.

That does not mean payment is swift. Sharma told Climate Home that payments are “often delayed for a year and sometimes even more, bringing hardship to farmers”.

Because of delayed payments, farmers are struggling to make ends meet and are falling into debt, Zaidi said. “Except for sowing, farmers have nothing in their control– neither production nor the final price.”

Representatives for sugarcane farmers told Niti Aayog, the government think tank, that climate threats, such as droughts and floods, “restrict their ability to switch to alternate crops”.

“These weather conditions lead to poor forecasting and the risk of crop failure is higher with other crops [such as cotton, wheat and soybean],” they said.

The Indian government has established a National Agriculture Disaster Management Plan to understand the impact of climate change on farming and focus on disaster risk reduction and possible adaptation measures for the sector.

But farmers told Climate Home they need more support.

No going back

In such a catch-22 situation, what is the solution?

“With climate change being a reality, the crop patterns need to be adjusted otherwise it will heavily impact the yield,” said 50-year-old Suresh Kabade, who has worked as a sugarcane farmer for the past 30 years. “We need to change with climate change.”

A 2019 study by a group of Indian scientists recommended the development of efficient irrigation practices, the adoption of a heat-tolerant cane variety and reducing the use of fossil fuel fertilisers in the near future to assist the sugar industry and help it adapt to the changing climate in northern India.

Other measures could include farmers adopting solar-powered pumps, getting crop insurance, and being taught to use weather forecasting tools, which are readily available but not widely used due to a lack of training.

Most of the farmers Climate Home spoke to were pessimistic about what lies ahead. Singh said there are times when he regrets leaving his corporate job but now there is no option but to continue. “We can’t go back.”

Asked if he will encourage his daughter to follow in his footsteps, Singh was direct. “My nine-year-old daughter enjoys farming and helps me in the fields. Considering my achievements, I would encourage her to take up farming… but if I consider present-day policies, I would never ask her to go into agriculture.”

Reporting by Mayank Aggarwal and Arvind Shukla. Photography by Meenal Upreti. Data visualisation by Gurman Bhatia. The Pulitzer Center supported this project with a reporting grant as part of its Your Work/Environment initiative.

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The document increases ambition from India’s previous target, set in 2016, to reduce emissions for each unit of GDP 33-35% from 2005 levels by 2030.

It clarifies the target for clean energy, which caused some confusion among experts when Modi announced it at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK. India is aiming for half of installed electricity generation capacity to come from non-fossil sources at the end of the decade, not half of energy use, which would have been harder to achieve. 

Non-fossil capacity, which includes nuclear and large hydro dams as well as wind and solar, is around 40% today.

“It’s good that they corrected that error – it’s now a lot more real,” Swati D’Souza, India lead analyst and coordinator at the International Energy Agency (IEA), told Climate Home News. “The 45% [emissions intensity] reduction target is achievable for India. It also actually gives us a lot of leg room to go over it in future.”

The timing just months ahead of Cop27 in Egypt and during an energy crisis is significant, D’Souza added. 

“India announced targets ahead of Cop27 despite the turmoil that is happening in global energy markets and with countries in Europe moving towards gas. We have stuck to our guns. That says something about the commitment of our government to decarbonise,” she said.

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Navroz Dubash, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, described the 2030 goal as a “substantial pledge”.  

“It is likely to be achievable based on current policies,” he said. “Nonetheless, this is not a trivial task and will require deep structural changes in the Indian economy to de-link carbon and GDP, beyond what India has achieved in past decades.”

Dubash said the government’s decision not to commit to a clean energy generation pledge was a “missed opportunity” to curb coal. That “would have been a game-changer, because it would have required active management of thermal versus renewable energy power,” he said.  

India has a domestic target of achieving 450 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Modi’s verbal pledge to increase that to 500GW did not make the final cut. 

“Nothing analogous now remains in the international sphere,” said Dubash. “The new electricity pledge has the benefit of simplicity and clarity, but is not the benchmark for tracking Indian progress – the domestic pledge is.”

In a press statement, the government said the long-term climate goals are conditional on finance. “India will require its due share from such international financial resources and technological support,” the statement reads. 

Modi previously estimated the price tag at $1 trillion.

While the plan does not commit to sectoral emission reductions, the government highlighted policies that are expected to support the goal. These include a rollout of LED bulbs and a decarbonisation plan for Indian Railways.

Climate Action Tracker judged India’s previous goal as “highly insufficient” and in line with 4C warming, but gave the government credit for policies and actions that would outperform the target. Two thirds of its Covid stimulus package went towards a green recovery, undermined somewhat by continued support for coal development.

The updated plan is expected to be uploaded to the UN registry in the coming days. 

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The increasing frequency of heatwaves and their early arrival have had enormous economic and health impacts, especially on agricultural communities and daily wage labourers. People employed in the informal sectors such as rickshaw pullers, domestic helpers and daily contractors risked heat stroke if they worked during the hottest hours and lost critical income if they rested instead.

Sporadic and prolonged summers are making monsoon season unpredictable, forcing farmers to adapt their production cycle every season. This year’s harsh summer has resulted in sudden pressure on power demand and coal shortages, pushing the country into a severe electricity crisis.

As if unprecedented heat was not enough to deal with, the northeastern state of Assam has witnessed torrential pre-monsoon rainfall causing floods all over the state. The overflowing of Brahmaputra River, one of the major rivers passing through India, has overrun close to 1,500 villages and affected nearly 500,000 people.

While the National Disaster Management Authority of India (NDMA) has started to rehabilitate the affected people, a sudden migration to nearby cities has put pressure on the local administrations.

All this shows why adapting to the impacts of climate change deserves equal attention to cutting emissions.

Analysis: In doubling adaptation finance, ‘champions’ aim to avoid repeat of $100bn failure

India came out with National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC) in 2015 with a budget allocation of 350 crore rupees ($4.4 billion). But research by The Indian Express found that the grants released from NAFCC since 2017 have been declining. In 2017-18, the government released 115.36 crores, falling to 42.94 crores 2020-21 and just 27.76 crores this year. This declining public funding is one of many reasons for the failure of several states to implement their adaptation strategies.

Developed nations have, yet so far, failed to fill the gap. UNCTADs trade and development report 2021 estimates that annual climate adaptation costs in the developing world could reach up to $300bn by 2030 and $500bn by 2050. At the last count, in 2019 rich countries contributed $20.1bn. That figure may be inflated; campaigners have found many examples of development projects labelled as “adaptation” that had little to do with the climate.

They need to meet their promises to scale up support and follow the evidence on what works.

In 2013, after Ahmedabad, Gujurat suffered 1,300 excess deaths due to heatwaves in 2010, authorities implemented a heat health adaptation plan. It is credited with preventing an estimated 1,190 deaths a year since then.

The World Meteorological Organization along with the India Meteorological Department have set up early warning systems in heatwave-prone areas. These are a start but do not go far enough to shield vulnerable communities. Slumdwellers and outside workers cannot afford to stop earning money even for a day.

The government has to come up with short- and long-term solutions that not only protect people from health hazards but also provide sustainable livelihoods in these vulnerable communities.

Officials should seek out transnational partnerships with other environmental ministries and agencies like GIZ or Teri to share knowledge and strategies.

Failure to act will lead to more avoidable suffering. The time for India to invest in climate adaptation is now.

Skand Agarwal is master’s student at the School of Transnational Governance based at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

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No, I had not done any high-intensity training or run a marathon. I had simply left my home in Delhi around 3pm to drop my six-year-old son at a friend’s house, less than two kilometers away.

India had its hottest March on record. Now we are in a heatwave, with top temperatures exceeding 40C (100F) in many parts of the country. This is what climate change, driven by burning fossil fuels, feels like. Unbearable.

I ditched my car that day, thinking I could walk a short distance. My son, fortunately, was not too badly affected, busily playing with his friend after gulping a bottle of juice. But I had learned my lesson. No more walking mid-afternoon.

The problem is, many of the options to make the heat more tolerable involve either somebody else’s sweat or burning more fossil fuels.

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A couple of days later, returning from the office, I took a cycle rickshaw, pulled by a man who must have been in his mid-40s. Throughout the 15-minute ride to my home, the rickshaw puller, a Muslim, kept quiet. But while waiting at a red light he said he would not be able to maintain his Ramadan fast until evening because of the heat.

During my journey home I saw many others who were out in the heat to earn a living, mostly men. There were fruit and vegetable sellers, people working at repair shops, hawkers of all descriptions.

They were sweating and seeking shade under the few trees, their heads covered with gamcha (a small white scarf that is popular in northern India). I had likewise worn a scarf on my excursion. It can reflect the sunlight and draw sweat away from the body. But these traditional methods of coping have their limits.

After my bout of heatstroke, I decided not to go out without my vehicle no matter how hard it hits my monthly budget – a reality considering the rising prices for petrol, diesel and gas. I vowed to keep all my meetings in the mornings or late afternoon – avoiding the hottest 3-4 hours.

IMF’s resilience fund ‘out of reach’ for some nations in need

And I thought of the people who cover the length and breadth of the city to deliver food and consumer goods. I asked the lady who helps me in managing the house to not go out to buy groceries and order them online with a preferred delivery time of morning or evening. I put out a bowl of water for birds and animals.

I have the privilege to own a car and air conditioning at home. These run on fossil fuels, making global heating worse. But even the richest 10% of Indians have smaller carbon footprints than citizens in developed countries, which bear the biggest responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in.

As a regular consumer of news, I read about deadly heatwaves in Rajasthan, or regions of Pakistan, that are even worse hit. What must be happening to people there is just too scary to even think about.

Climate scientists warned us summers would get hotter. That is now unfolding and it won’t stop until we all end our dependence on coal, oil and gas.

What we need now is to have all hands on deck – come together, stop working in silos and find solutions now. There is no other way to tackle this but to join hands – rich and poor – because when climate change impacts intensify, the ones with more resources won’t escape the impacts either.

It is time we start looking at better public transport, energy-efficient systems and learn how we can make changes in our daily lives to help.

The post The heat in Delhi is unbearable. This is what the climate crisis feels like appeared first on Climate Home News.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) guidelines say forests are defined by the “presence of trees and the absence of other predominant land uses”. It adds: “It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban land use”.

Indian forestry experts have accused successive governments of exaggerating the extent of India’s forest cover in order to make it easier to meet climate targets and access more climate finance for protecting forests.

For the first time, the government’s latest bi-annual ‘State of the Forests report’ (ISFR) maps what it regards as forestry cover in India’s seven biggest cities. An area of land over one hectare with as little as 10% canopy density is included in the tally.

According to the ISFR report, 5% of the city of Hyderabad is now covered with forest. This is more than double the level recorded of 2011.

This rise drew praise from within India and abroad. “Congrats Hyderabad!”, tweeted the president of the Green Belt and Road Institute Erik Solheim. “Good news”, said Times of India editor Syed Akbar.

But comparing the ISFR’s map of Hyderabad with satellite imagery from Google Earth shows that among the areas counted as medium density forests are the campus of Osmania University and the area known as “lab quarters” centred around headquarters of Indian missile manufacturer Bharat Dynamics.

The headquarters of missile manufacturer Bharat Dynamics is counted as forest. (Picture: Google Earth/Screenshot)

Shubham Sharma is a researcher at the Indian institute of forest management who lived in Hyderabad for two years. He told Climate Home News: “This is a defence establishment. The Indian Defence and Research Development organisations, wherever they are, in multiple cities, they have these big campuses and residential areas and it might have a lot of green but that doesn’t make it a forest”.

Similarly, he  said, large campuses of universities like Osmania often have landscaping which includes green carpets and trees.

The Navy Nagar area of Mumbai. On the left is a golf course, which is not counted as forest. The area on the right is counted as ‘open forest’. (Picture: Screenshot/Google Earth)

In the coastal mega-city of Mumbai, the government has classified much of the area known as Navy Nagar as ‘open forest’. The area is  on Mumbai’s southern tip and is controlled by the Indian Navy and houses its sailors. Satellite imagery reveals the ‘open forest’ is formed by trees in the streets and gardens around these naval offices and accommodation.

One Mumbai resident, who works near to the area and wanted to remain anonymous “because the government here is not the most friendly”, told Climate Home “there’s no forest in Navy Nagar”.

In the Gujarati city of Ahmedabad, ‘open forest’ includes the Sabarmati Central jail whose spoke-and-wheel design includes rows of trees between buildings. The prison is surrounded by a railway and one side and the densely-populated Vijay Nagar neighbourhood on the other.

The area around Sabarmati central jail in Ahmedabad is counted as forest. (Picture: Google Earth/Screenshot)

In Delhi, much of the city’s southern border around the Asola wildlife sanctuary is considered ‘open forest’ including holiday homes known as ‘farmhouses’ for the wealthy and densely-populated settlements like Bhatti Mines for the poor.

Souparna Lahiri, a Delhi-based campaigner for the Global Forest Coalition said: “For years, these have been illegally converted into settlements by the construction lobby and the very rich people who grabbed and bought land”.

The swimming pools, lawns and long driveways of these farm houses are visible from satellite imagery. Lahiri said most of the owners come to these homes only on weekends or special occasions. Sometimes, the properties are rented out for weddings.

These ‘farm houses’ host wealthy people and are counted as forest. (Picture: Google Earth/Screenshot)

Sharma said that planting trees in urban areas helps with local air pollution and shade. But, he said, when they are outside forests they don’t help to sequester much carbon.

“You might think the trees are the main source absorbing carbon but it is is not the tree it is actually the soil,” he said. “In a forest, around 50% of the carbon is in the forest soil.”

Lahiri said that, for decades, successive Indian governments have sought compensation for not turning their forests to other uses. This incentivises them to use a broad definition of what a forest is.

“India has been targeting international funding for [a] long [time] on the basis of compensation for opportunity lost for development,” he said, citing India’s enthusiastic participation in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development mechanism.

India has set a 2030 target of having 33% of its land under tree cover, as part of its National Mission for a Green India. The ISFR says the figure is now 22%.

In its 2015 climate plan, the government also committed to creating a carbon sink to sequester an additional 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2, through increasing tree and forest cover. This climate plan is expected to be updated this year and may include new forestry targets.

The post Prison, party mansions and a naval base among urban areas India claims as ‘forest’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

The 30-year-old activist with the People’s Health Movement was particularly alarmed during the deadly second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, when the Indian capital’s hospitals were overwhelmed and she had symptoms resembling Covid-19 infection.

Kakkar was able to escape to the relatively fresh air of her hometown Kasauli, in the foothills of the Himalayas, as her company allowed her to work from home. Now, she is back in the office and back in Delhi, where the pollution is bad enough officials recently considered – but rejected – a temporary full lockdown to clear the air.

“I am taking a lot of precautions such as wearing masks to keep my lungs safe, an impossible task in this acute pollution,” says Kakkar.

In the last two weeks, the air quality in most parts of the city ranged from severe to poor. The air quality index recorded PM2.5 levels in the range of 290 to 400 parts per million, nearly 10 to 15 times the World Health Organization safe limit. Research links exposure to a high concentration of fine particulates to breathing and heart problems.

With about 20 million residents in and around Delhi struggling to breathe, India’s highest court is weighing in. Judges directed the government to convene an emergency meeting to improve the air quality.

India ‘cannot escape’ coal phasedown, top coal ministry official says

Officials took steps to restrict construction work, industrial activities and the entry of trucks into the city, bringing limited short term relief. A longer term solution needs to address the city’s reliance on fossil fuels for transport, power and industry, and the seasonal impact of crop stubble burning to clear fields in neighbouring states.

In a Supreme Court hearing on 29 November, the government accepted that a serious overhaul of industry and transport in the city would be needed to tackle the pollution crisis. For example, officials said the bus fleet should be scaled up from 3,000 to 11,000 to reduce reliance on cars and motorbikes. Concerns were also raised on coal-fired power plants and monitoring of clean fuel used by industries.

“Lockdown in Delhi could have helped bring down the pollution level as transportation contributes around 51% to the city’s total emissions,” Avikal Somvanshi, programme manager, clean air campaign at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), told Climate Home.

“Controlling vehicular emissions can help; however, the issue cannot be resolved immediately. It will take a few years as the city implements policy on efficient engines and clean fuels,” said Dr Anju Goel, a climate change expert at think-tank The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri).

Even more challenging is coordinating action with Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, where farming practices are behind a seasonal spike in pollution. The court observed that crop stubble burning contributes only 4% of annual air pollution in Delhi, with its concentration spiraling to 36% during peak winter pollution in November.

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Delhi has been reeling under severe winter pollution for decades, and since record taking started in 2016, not much has changed. None of these states are eager to prepare a regional plan to tackle emissions.

“Such a plan will not only improve air quality but also reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including methane, carbon dioxide – and imagine its positive impact on people’s health,” Somvanshi added.

In India, biomass burning happens almost throughout the year. About 5% of the biomass fires come from farmland and 14% from forest fires. While forest fires occur before monsoon months, residual crop burning occurs mainly in the Indo-Gangetic plains during winter.

“If we can control air pollution, then we also solve the climate crisis to a certain extent. But for farmers, crop stubble burning is a matter of their livelihood. So they need affordable alternatives to make a shift,” said Goel. “This is where things get difficult.”

Farmers in Punjab – the breadbasket of India – burn crop stubble as it’s an affordable and fast way to prepare the land for the next crop. The state government has offered subsidized machines, organic methods to convert crop waste into fertilizers, and financial incentives not to burn crop stubble. But these incentives have failed to solve the issue.

The Supreme Court is continuing to monitor government measures to tackle air pollution. The next hearing is on 2 December.

The post As Delhi chokes, India’s supreme court is grappling with the air pollution crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.

Anil Jain, India’s coal secretary, made the remarks while launching a report by the National Foundation for India (NFI) on the socio-economic impacts of weaning the country off coal.

“Now there is an international consensus. There is a goal: phasedown, which will happen. India is a signatory to that. I’m sure in the coming years the pressure will be to quantify the phasing down. We cannot escape that and nor does India intend to dilute its commitment,” he said.

India, backed by China, made a last-minute diplomatic push at the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow to water down the language of the final agreement from calling for a “phaseout” of unabated coal power to a “phasedown”.

Prime minister Narendra Modi has promoted coal mine expansion, with plans to ramp up domestic coal production from 783 million tonnes in 2019 to one billion tonnes per year as part of his self-reliant India policy.

But analysts say the plans are incompatible with India’s strengthened headline climate targets for 2030 and 2070 net zero goal announced by Modi at Cop26.

The newly launched NFI report says the carbon neutrality goal alone “sounds the death knell for coal expansion in the country” and “puts India on a path to transition towards a cleaner greener economy”. But with millions of people dependent on the coal sector, NFI says India needs a transition plan.

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Ashish Fernandes, a coal expert at Climate Risk Horizons, told Climate Home News negotiations in Glasgow forced India to confront the need to wind down the coal sector, which the government “has been reluctant to address head on”.

Signing up to the “phasedown” language was “huge progress” for a country where energy demand is expected to skyrocket, said Sandeep Pai, a senior research lead with the Just Transition Initiative.

“But there is no trajectory for India to decrease its coal use this decade,” he said. And the absence of a clear “phasedown” timeline means it leaves the text open to interpretation.

At the political level, the very idea of a phasedown is resisted. Environment minister Bhupender Yadav, who negotiated the language change in Glasgow, told an event that the term “phasedown” means India can decrease its share of coal in the energy mix but allow its coal use to rise in absolute terms.

The Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water estimates that to achieve net zero by 2070, India would need to peak its use of coal for power generation by 2040 and drop its overall usage by 99% by 2060.

For Fernandes, there is no space in India’s energy sector for the “all of the above approach” which Delhi has been pursuing, expanding both coal and renewable sources.

A recent study by Climate Risk Horizons and think tank Ember found that 27GW of planned coal power plant capacity were not needed and risked impeding India’s renewable energy ambitions.

Instead, the government should be “more aggressively” shutting down old and inefficient coal power plants and commit not to build any new coal plants, said Fernandes.

Swati D’souza, who led the NFI study, told Climate Home that India’s coal transition conversation was “just beginning”.

NFI’s report is the first comprehensive analysis to map the scale of the transition across all of India’s coal-consuming industries.

It conservatively estimates that more than 13 million people – nearly the size of the population of Zimbabwe – depend on the coal economy, with people in 135 districts depending on two or more coal assets for their livelihoods.

That excludes those working in the informal sector that could grow the number to 20 million people impacted by the transition.

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Not everyone will require the same support. It will be easier to rehabilitate skilled workers in the power sector than the low-skilled and poorly educated workforce in the brick sector, D’souza said. Bricks are made in coal-burning kilns.

The report finds that the government needs to prepare a timeline for closing coal assets that will start with mine closures.

In 2019, 94 open cast mines of the 420 coal mines in India were producing 85% of the country’s coal. Only 128 mines were making a profit. That means that underground mines, most of which are loss-making, will likely shut this decade, NFI found.

“There will be a phasedown for coal mines,” D’souza said. “But, in the medium term, we will definitely see an increase in the amount of coal consumption.”

Ultimately, achieving the transition hinges on a financing which doesn’t currently exist.

Coal secretary Jain said coal mining companies and employers could not be asked to foot the bill or they risked “deserting” the sector entirely.

NFI says India’s domestic resources won’t be enough to implement the transition and it will need to international support.

An $8.5bn transition package mobilised for South Africa could provide a model for India. But the report adds that it will require the government to determine how much money is needed to implement the transition and support existing workers.

The post India ‘cannot escape’ coal phasedown, top coal ministry official says appeared first on Climate Home News.

He increased the ambition of India’s renewable and economic carbon intensity targets while calling on rich countries to provide more climate finance to the developing world.

Modi described the announcements as five “elixirs” that will deliver “an unprecedented contribution from India for climate action”.

“Today, India is moving forward with a great deal of courage and ambition on the subject of climate,” he said.

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One new target was to reach 500 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030. This target includes small hydropower plants and is an increase on India’s previous 450 GW target.

He said India would get 50% of its energy from renewables by 2030. India set a 40% by 2030 target in 2016 which was nearly achieved in June this year.

Modi promised India would reduce carbon intensity by 45% by 2030, up from a previous target of 33% set in 2016. These targets are based on 2005 levels.

Finally, the prime minister said that India would reduce its projected total carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes by 2030.

Charu Lata, an clean energy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Climate Home News the carbon neutrality goal was “a big and good surprise” which was “nowhere in the picture” in the run-up to the Cop26 summit.

“Announcing the target is a good start but a lot more needs to be done on implementation and hopefully that will follow,” she said.

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Indian climate analysts told Climate Home the announcement marked a clear increase in ambition. However, they agreed clarification was needed on some of the targets, including on a goal for India to “fulfil 50% of its energy requirements from renewable energy sources by 2030”.

“Reaching 50% of renewable energy by 2030 is not possible,” said Swati D’Souza, research lead for climate action at the National Foundation for India. She suggested Modi misspoke and that the target is designed for electricity generation rather than energy.

On reaching 2070 net zero emissions, D’Souza said: “If that’s the ambition, it’s time for India to act on coal mine closures. The time is here and the time is now,” she said, adding that coal regions have historically taken 40-50 years to phase out the fossil fuel.

Experts Climate Home News spoke to agreed that generating half of the country’s electricity by 2030 is the most ambitious goal.

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One Indian official in Glasgow told Climate Home News: “we don’t just set distant targets, we deliver them,” adding that the country “will punch above its weight”.

The pledges made by Modi are expected to be formalised in a nationally determined contribution (NDC) to be submitted to the United Nations soon.

The announcement came after Modi held bilateral meetings with US president Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Rome, Italy.

There has been significant diplomatic pressure on Modi to raise India’s ambition at the summit. But Delhi has been resisting increasing its climate plan until now, calling for financial help and technological support to accelerate its climate ambition.

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In his Cop26 speech, Modi said that this increase in ambition should be matched by increases in climate finance and the transfer of low-carbon technologies from developed countries to developing countries.

He said he expects wealthy countries to make $1trillion available as soon as possible. “India understands and shares the pain of other developing countries,” Modi said.

Rich countries promised in 2009 to collectively mobilise $100bn a year in climate finance by 2020, but are not on track to meet the milestone until 2023.

“India has clearly put the ball in the court of the developed world. This is real climate action,” said Arunabha Ghosh, head of the New Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). “Now, India demands $1 trillion of climate finance as soon as possible and will monitor not just climate action, but delivered climate finance.”

According to CEEW analysis, India needs 5,900GW of solar power to achieve net zero by 2050.

In recent months, India has been involved in a number of initiatives to boost its renewable energy roll out. These include a partnership with the US to accelerate the deployment of clean energy.

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On Tuesday, Modi is due to join prime minister Boris Johnson in announcing a green grids initiative to accelerate the integration of solar and wind power on international grids by connecting energy-rich locations such as sunny deserts and windy coastlines with urban centres.

The initiative will be coordinated by a ministerial steering group including France, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Government spokesperson Asif Bhamla said the initiative aimed to “connect the world’s solar energy via one grid” as “critical” for India to accelerate its clean energy transition.

The post India strengthens climate targets, aiming for net zero by 2070 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Cyclone Tauktae made landfall as an “extremely severe” cyclonic storm in the Saurashtra region late on Monday, with winds gusting up to 220 kilometres per hour.

It is the worst cyclone to hit the region since 1998 and the fifth strongest tropical cyclone on record in the Arabian Sea, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.  

Pictures and video posted on social media show huge waves engulfing low-lying areas, houses destroyed and trees and electricity poles toppled. Electricity supply has been disrupted across several states.

At least 16 people have died and more than 90 people are missing after a barge owned by India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and deployed for offshore drilling sank off the coast of Mumbai, near the Heera oil fields, with 273 people on board.

Deputy chief of naval staff Murlidhar Sadashiv Pawar told the Indian news agency ANI this led to “one of the most challenging search and rescue operations I’ve seen in the last four decades”.

Tauktae – Pre Cyclone effects in Mahuva, Bhavnagar, Coastal Gujarat.
Heavy Winds before Tauktae made landfall in Gujarat#Tauktecyclone pic.twitter.com/Zq2RsQwdrk

— Haneefbk (@haneefbayar) May 17, 2021

The Arabian Sea was not previously known for powerful cyclones. But scientists say rising greenhouse gas emissions and warming waters are leading to the formation of more intense cyclones off Indian’s west coast.

“The Arabian Sea used to be cyclone shy, but no more,” said Roxy Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

“Among the tropical oceans, the western Indian Ocean including the Arabian Sea registers the fastest warming rates,” he told Climate Home News. “This rapid warming in the Arabian Sea has hence resulted in an increase in both the frequency and the intensity of cyclones in the basin.”

Destruction after the passage of Cyclone Tauktae past Goa (Photo: Parthasarathi Rout)

The event has raised serious concerns of a new rise in Covid-19 infections. More than 200,000 people were evacuated from their homes and moved to shelters, where social distancing is hard to maintain.

India is grappling with a catastrophic wave of coronavirus cases, which has overwhelmed hospitals across the country. Cyclone Tauktae has put even more pressure on local health facilities.

In Mumbai, a major vaccination centre suffered serious damage as winds lashed the city. Hundreds of Covid-19 patients in temporary facilities were discharged or moved to hospitals as the cyclone approached. The city of 20 million people recorded more rain in 24 hours than at any other time during the month of May in recorded history.

Standing tall and strong even with all the pounding of these gigantic waves
.#architecture #mumbai #CycloneTauktae #TauktaeCyclone #CycloneAlert #CycloneTauktaeupdate pic.twitter.com/cDsKHFkq6l

— Ujwal Puri (@ompsyram) May 17, 2021

Climate projections dating from 2013 forecast an increase of 40-50% in tropical cyclone frequency over the Arabian Sea. For researchers, Cyclone Tauktae is evidence of that trend.

Vineet Kumar Singh, a colleague of Koll’s at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology who researches cyclones in the north Indian Ocean, said on Twitter that since satellite records began in India in 1980, this was the first time that pre-monsoon cyclones had been recorded in the Arabian Sea for four consecutive years.

Cyclone Tauktae was the strongest pre-monsoon Arabian Sea cyclone in the last decade, he added. Monsoon season runs from July to September.

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A review by the two researchers of weather observations from the past four decades in the north Indian Ocean found cyclones rapidly intensifying within 24 hours, when surface temperatures exceeded 30C. Tauktae followed this pattern.

“This is a challenge both to forecasters and the disaster management on ground,” said Koll.

Trees felled by strong winds in Mumbai (Photo: Thomas Spencer)

Between 1982 and 2018, sea surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea increased 1.2-1.4C. There is a strong correlation between increasing sea surface temperatures during the pre-monsoon season and more intense cyclones.

During the post-monsoon season, warmer waters have led to an increase in the frequency of extremely severe cyclones in the Arabian Sea, according to 2017 study published in Nature Climate Change. It warned that continued increased emissions “will further amplify the risk of cyclones in the [Arabian Sea]”.  

Koll told Climate Home the west coast of India is not prepared for frequent and intense weather events, unlike the eastern coast where cyclones are frequent.

While forecasts have much improved and predicted the cyclone nearly a week in advance, “we cannot wait for forecasts every year to evacuate people,” Koll said. “And we cannot evacuate houses, infrastructure, cars, and ecosystems.

“India should prepare a risk assessment for its coastline and take precautionary measures using both natural defenses like mangroves and artificial defenses as well as rehabilitate people from high-risk zones.”

The post Cyclone Tauktae leaves trail of devastation in western India, fuelled by a warming sea appeared first on Climate Home News.

Jayant Sinha, a lawmaker representing the coal producing Hazaribagh district in Jharkhand, north east India, submitted the bill to the Lok Sabha, parliament’s lower house earlier this week.

The bill, obtained by Climate Home News, aims to provide a framework “by which India can develop and implement clear and stable climate change policies” under the Paris Agreement.

Modelled on New Zealand’s climate law, it would require the government to establish emissions budgets every five years, starting in 2022.  An independent climate change commission would be created to drive policy recommendations and monitor progress towards achieving the net zero target.

“My objective was to start the discussion in India about a net zero target. And what would be the means and mechanisms to achieve it and start fostering a dialogue on this topic,” Sinha told Climate Home News.

My view: India can create crores of high-paying jobs and save the world by declaring Net Zero by 2050 target. (1/2) https://t.co/4fvvlKgkJZ pic.twitter.com/agFvL9R7s5

— Jayant Sinha (@jayantsinha) March 12, 2021

In practice, it is “very rare” for a private member’s bill to become law in India as the government is unlikely to support legislation that it hasn’t proposed, he said.

But Sinha, who chairs the parliament’s standing committee on finance, hopes the bill will drive the issue to the top of India’s political agenda.

“We are not going to get to 2C or 1.5C unless India completely changes its trajectory and gets to net zero as soon as possible,” he said.

In recent months, prime minister Narendra Modi has come under growing diplomatic pressure to set a net zero goal after some of the world’s biggest polluters announced carbon neutrality commitments, including China.

Government officials close to Modi are reportedly working with senior bureaucrats and foreign advisors to consider setting a net zero goal for 2050 or 2047, the centenary of the country’s independence from the UK.

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Under the bill, the climate change commission would be tasked with helping to prepare emissions budgets and report on progress in meeting them. Should the government fail to meet its goals, the commission would have the power to levy penalty fines.

Navroz Dubash, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, who is working on proposals to develop robust climate institutions in India, welcomed the prospect of an Indian climate law.

But Sinha’s commission proposal does not reflect India’s approach to cutting emissions, which is focused on transforming key sectors in line with a low-carbon development pathway, Dubash told Climate Home News.

“A climate change commission is useful, but not one articulated solely or even mostly around carbon budgets. Meeting carbon budgets does not animate Indian politics and policy, transformational sectoral change does,” he said in an email.

“The proposed bill copies a little too readily from international experience, without making the effort to design institutions that will work most effectively within India. India deserves more than cut and paste.”

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Despite growing chatter over the possibility of India setting a net zero goal, analysts have previously told Climate Home News that while some modelling work and sectoral analysis was being carried out by researchers, this was not part of a detailed cross-ministerial process.

One coal analyst described the net zero discourse in India as “vague and aspirational”.

Swati D’souza, a Delhi-based energy consultant, said that “going straight to net zero will be a major shift in policy, particularly since we have just auctioned new coal blocks”.

In June 2020, Modi launched an auction of 41 coal mining blocks to private companies. Adani Enterprises won the bid for the Gondulpara coal mine in Sinha’s constituency of Hazaribagh.

For its climate action to be compatible with limiting temperature rise to 1.5C, India would need to abandon plans to build new coal power plants and phase out all coal power generation by 2040, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Sinha defended recent coal auctions as part of Modi’s strategy to build a self-reliant India. “Ultimately,” he wrote in an opinion piece last year, it “is about making India truly globally competitive, so that we build up our economic strength and can control our own destiny”.

Scientists push to add “huge” fish trawling emissions to national inventories

Speaking to Climate Home News, Sinha said there were “a range of technological solutions” to cut emissions from coal, including through carbon capture, that would allow some coal production to continue under a 2050 net zero pathway.

While achieving carbon neutrality would require significant investments, Sinha said setting the target would make funding opportunities flow.

“If India takes a proactive position on net zero, we will get so much support from the world. It would be a tremendous boost for the economy,” he said.

As long as India continues to expand its renewable and coal capacity in parallel, D’souza said it remained to be seen how the country could mobilise the resources to achieve net zero by 2050.

“It is possible with political backing, but it will mean that the government needs to start looking at issues related to ‘just transitions’ now, rather than 10 years in the future,” she said.

The post Indian lawmaker submits private bill to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Six months ago, the idea of carbon neutrality was hardly on the agenda in India. But a number of major international climate announcements have driven net zero to the forefront.

Analysts say the issue is starting to be discussed in climate circles since China’s 2060 carbon neutrality pledge, Joe Biden’s election victory in the US and the UK’s diplomatic push to ramp up climate ambition ahead of Cop26.

In private, analysts said they wouldn’t be surprised if the government set a carbon neutrality goal within the course of the year, with any decision expected to come directly from the top. But in many ways, the country is not ready to set a hard deadline to end its contribution to climate change.

“There is a lot of chattering about net zero but that discussion is not anchored in policy development and policy analysis,” Thomas Spencer, who works on the decarbonisation of the Indian power sector at The Energy and Resources Institute in Mumbai, told Climate Home News.

While some detailed modelling work, largely focused on sectorial analysis, is being carried out by research groups and academics, it is not part of a detailed cross-ministerial process.

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In a report published earlier this month, the International Energy Agency suggested India could get on a path to net zero emissions by the mid-2060s.

“How meaningful is that? That is as far away from the present as 1975 was in the past – a time of pre-internet and pre-oil shocks,” said Navroz Dubash, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

“The diplomatic political gain [of setting a net zero goal] is greater than the domestic cost but it would be a shame if that’s all [the target] does,” Dubash told Climate Home News.

“We have absolutely no idea if setting a net zero goal will dampen development prospects,” he said, citing the lack of domestic studies on the issue. In a blog post, he warned that an unplanned target could “derail a carefully built momentum toward low-carbon focused development actions”.

Sharma’s visit to India this week is part of the UK’s diplomatic push for countries to improve their 2030 climate goals ahead of the Cop26 climate talks in November and aim for net zero greenhouse gas emissions towards the middle of the century.

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During a meeting with prime minister Narendra Modi, Sharma outlined the UK’s 2050 net zero goal and said its tougher 2030 target “sent a clear message to the world” of the ambition needed, according to a readout of the meeting.

“I firmly believe that powerful action from India will be a catalyst for change, encouraging others to be more ambitious in their approaches to protecting both people and planet,” Sharma said in a statement before leaving the country.

US presidential climate envoy John Kerry told an Indian conference earlier this month that striving towards carbon neutrality by mid-century was “a critical commitment at this point in time”.

Pleased to meet with COP26 President-designate @AlokSharma_RDG today. We discussed India-UK cooperation on climate change agenda and COP26.
My best wishes to UK for successful organisation of the climate summit. pic.twitter.com/ZLACrYtR5n

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) February 16, 2021

 

Sharma’s visit coincided with the arrest of 22-year-old climate activist Disha Ravi, who was charged with sedition and accused of editing a toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg on how to support the Indian farmers’ protests. She was arrested in her home in Bangalore and flown to Delhi, where she remains in police custody.

In 2019, India committed to deliver 450GW of renewable energy by 2030 – a target Modi says India is on track to exceed.

According to Climate Action Tracker, India could become a global climate leader if it enhances its 2030 target, abandons plans to build new coal power plants and phases out all coal production by 2040.

But Delhi has so far resisted setting a tougher 2030 climate goal. Speaking at the climate ambition summit in December, Modi reminded world leaders of India’s small historic contribution to global carbon emissions.

“In 2047, India will celebrate a hundred years as a modern, independent nation,” he said, promising the country would “not only meet its own target but will also exceed your expectations”.

Will India set a goal of achieving #netzero by 2047?

I think they could and several business leaders that were part of this #WSDS21 seemed to agree.

Thanks to @teriin for inviting me to speak at the World Sustainable Development Summit.@mendiluce #RaceToZero pic.twitter.com/JeCa8hDh5k

— Nigel Topping (@topnigel) February 12, 2021

“There is no doubt that in the domestic policy debate there is a broad understanding that India can go much further than it has committed to do,” Spencer said.

But India must overcome major hurdles in its transition to net zero, analysts say. While the country could easily decarbonise half of its power supply network through renewables and electrify passenger transport, addressing carbon-intensive sectors such as steel and cement, where Indian per capita consumption is forecast to grow significantly, will be much more difficult, Spencer said.

“Until humanity can collectively invest in these hard-to-abate decarbonisation challenges, there is no way that India can commit by itself to a net zero target given its expected demand growth in these sectors,” he told Climate Home.

Instead, a net zero goal should be framed as an aspiration and used to drive a conversation on the domestic actions and international innovation and support needed to turn the goal into reality, he said.

For Dubash, India pursuing a carbon neutrality goal would require building the institutional capacity to hold the government accountable to its pledge and oversee its implementation. “This is not a small ask,” he said.

The post Under diplomatic pressure, India considers net zero – but major hurdles remain appeared first on Climate Home News.

Rock, ice, debris and water flowing at high speeds swept away hydroelectric projects and people in its path on Sunday, before it mellowed around 100 kilometres downstream.

Mujeem Khan, a daily wage labourer earning 500 rupees a day ($7), was working near a tunnel at the Tapovan hydropower project, where 150 of his colleagues got trapped. He says he survived narrowly. “Luckily, I was a little higher up the slope when the flood hit,” he told Climate Home News.

Khan heard what sounded like a massive blast, turned around and saw water and debris dragging away members of his extended family. “My brother and other relatives were working right where the flood hit. I saw them being washed away into the tunnel.” He had little hope of their being found alive.

As of 12 noon local time Tuesday, the Uttarakhand state government reported that 31 dead bodies had been recovered, of whom 29 had been identified. More than 48 hours after the incident, 175 people were unaccounted for.

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While scientists and experts are still working to pinpoint what triggered the flood, the working hypothesis is that due to a rock slide, a large chunk of glacier broke at an altitude over 5,500 metres above sea level.

The ice and rock fell into a glacial lake, causing the banks to burst and water to gush down the steep and narrow gorges of the upper Himalayas. The number and area of glacial lakes has increased in the mountain range due to climate change.

Floodwaters smashed into the Rishi Ganga hydroelectric project at around 3,700 metres above sea level and washed it away entirely. According to the chief minister of Uttarakhand Trivendra Rawat, at least 35 people working at the project are missing. Concrete and debris from the Rishi Ganga project were then carried downstream and smashed into the under-construction 520MW Tapovan Vishnugad hydropower project, causing massive damage.

The disaster was made more likely by climate change, according to Mohammed Farooq Azam, an assistant professor of glaciology and hydrology at the Indian Institute of Technology in Indore. “Yes, warming temperatures are making events like avalanches, ice fall and landslides more frequent. Erratic weather patterns like increased snowfall and rainfall play a role as do warmer winters,” Azam said.

Avalanches are rare in February in the upper reaches of the Himalayas as the snow and ice remain frozen due to low temperatures. This year, however, has been warmer than normal and in January Uttarakhand – and the rest of India – saw its highest average temperature in 60 years.

Cop26 dream team: The people setting the climate agenda on seven key issues

AP Dimri, a professor at the School of Environmental Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, said the higher reaches of the Himalayas are warming faster than the global average which has led to rapid melting of glaciers. That has, in turn, caused the formation of a large number of glacial lakes. “These lakes also become reservoirs of ice and moraine debris. With an increase in this phenomenon, the breach of glacier lakes poses a severe threat to communities living downstream,” Dimri, who is from Uttarakhand, said.

The damage was aggravated by debris from development projects including the hydropower dams and highways being carried downstream.

In 2013, the calamitous combination of climate change and haphazard development in Uttarakhand led to the deaths of over 6,000 people in flash floods caused by heavy rainfall during the Indian monsoon.

Experts such as Ravi Chopra, director of the People’s Science Institute in Uttarakhand, had been warning about the risk of such development projects even before 2013. “But the government doesn’t listen when it doesn’t suit them… when we say that project should not be built or that the size should be reduced,” Chopra said.

Chopra argued that the government should pay heed to the views of experts and fix responsibility for this disaster. “Companies and officers who are found to be at fault should be personally held responsible and punished. Only then can we hope for some change,” he said.

Kabir Agarwal is an independent journalist from India who writes on climate change, business and the economy. He has contributed to the Times of India, Caravan magazine, Al Jazeera and most recently worked as a national reporter at The Wire – India’s leading independent news website. In 2018, he was awarded the Red Ink Award for excellence in journalism. 

Twitter – @kabira_tweeting

This article was amended to reflect analysis showing that a rock slide, not an avalanche, was the likely trigger of the disaster.

The post Fatal Himalayan glacial lake outburst highlights destabilising effect of warming appeared first on Climate Home News.

His unusually prescriptive solution to the climate crisis was inspired by a tour of the Pacific, where he saw the vulnerability of small island states to rising seas and weather extremes.

At the time, Guterres’ plea looked ambitious in the extreme. Coal expansion was big business, driven by major Asian powers.

Eighteen months later, while hundreds of coal plants are still in planning worldwide, the political and investment landscape has shifted dramatically. An end to the global coal plant boom is no longer such a distant prospect.

China’s pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2060 implies no unabated coal burning in 40 years – the typical life expectancy of a power station. Coal-reliant countries including South Korea, South Africa and Japan are aiming for net zero by 2050.

Tracker: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

The economic case for coal has continued to weaken. The International Energy Agency, which has long been accused of being overly negative about renewables, this month crowned solar “the new king of electricity”, saying it delivers cheaper power than new coal plants in most countries.

In the past year companies including Samsung and General Electric have announced they’ll stop building coal plants and major funders like Blackrock and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank have pledged to stop financing them.

But coal projects won’t all be halted overnight. Those hoping to delay its death include coal workers and their trade unions, coal company bosses, coal-rich national and provincial governments and any government official who can get a kickback from approving a deal.

So where will the world’s last coal-fired power plant be built? Here’s our guide to the likely hold-outs.

The coal giants

China

While its net zero emissions pledge entails little future for coal, as of July 2020 China had power stations planned at 127 locations and under construction at 104. The country’s next five-year plan to 2025 is expected to allow for some new coal capacity.

Ted Nace, executive director at Global Energy Monitor, is putting his money on China to build the last coal plant. They have the experience, cheap labour and materials to build plants cheaper and faster than anyone else, he says, adding: “Just as China’s coal plant industrial complex took a large commitment of resources and national will to develop, it will likely be harder to unwind, from a political and economic standpoint, than in other countries.”

Tim Buckley from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa) agrees that planned coal plants in China are more likely to be built than those in Vietnam or Indonesia, for example.

China remains by far the world’s biggest producer of coal and coal-rich provincial governments want to use those resources to drive economic growth. Building power stations creates jobs in construction, steel, cement and property. Provincial bigwigs in Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi or Xingjiang could make China the last nation to build a plant, despite Beijing’s green ambitions.

A coal plant in China’s Henan province (Picture: VT Polywoda/Flickr)

Indonesia

After China, Indonesia has the most power stations in pre-construction phases of planning (52). Ieefa’s Buckley describes this as a “stupidly big pipeline” which, if fully realised, will leave them with excess generation capacity.

While most will be cancelled, he says, some will go ahead. This is likely to make Indonesia the last country to build one “just because otherwise they’ve got a shedload of totally useless coal which will otherwise have to stay in the ground”, he says.

While Global Energy Monitor’s Nace is confident the last plant will be Chinese-built, he says it could be outside of China. There are about 40 Chinese overseas coal plants scheduled for after 2027 and, while Nace anticipates most of these will be cancelled, one could be the world’s last.

“Among these possible plants, I’d guess that the last one built will be in Indonesia, since it is the country in this cohort that is also a significant mining country and for that reason is somewhat more politically committed to coal,” he said. The other nations are Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Bosnia-Herzegovnia.

Coal processing at a mine in East Kalimantan (Picture: ILO/Flickr)

The waverers

India

A few years ago, India was vigorously pursing coal but now it only has plants in pre-construction in 28 locations. This is one less than Turkey, a fact Global Energy Monitor calls “unthinkable just a few years ago when China and India together dominated development”. In 2019, India’s coal power generation fell by 3% and its pre-construction pipeline fell by half, largely because of financing problems.

Despite this slowdown, Wei Shen, a political economist at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, says: “India and Indonesia may both see more capacities of coal power in the future”.

Unlike China, India has no net zero emissions target. Millions of Indians lack access to electricity, while average citizen’s wealth and carbon footprint is far smaller than in China. In some places, developers will make the case for coal power to expand energy access, support industrial growth and lift people out of poverty, even as solar becomes increasingly competitive.

Turkey

Turkey has the world’s third largest pre-construction pipeline with plants in 29 locations planned. On the other hand, it has a track record of cancellations, scrapping 80 projects this decade.

The country’s coal push has been driven by geopolitics. After a Turkish jet shot down a Russian one in 2015, the two nations have been at loggerheads, so Turkey is seeking to wean itself off Russian gas. But renewables are a far more popular alternative to gas than coal and Turkey has more than enough sunshine, wind and land to make them work.

Turkey has pursued coal as an alternative to Russian gas (Picture: Russian Presidency)

Pakistan

Pakistan has coal plants under pre-construction in nine locations. The country has large coal reserves and an active coal lobby arguing that they should be used. Pakistan’s influential military has a strong relationship with China and so the government is unlikely to cancel any Chinese-built coal power plants.

On the other hand, since 2018 prime minister Imran Khan has taken a more sceptical stance on Chinese-backed coal projects and sought to renegotiate partnership deals. In 2019, Pakistan shelved the US$2bn Rahim Yar Khan plant.

Vietnam

Vietnam has recently indicated that it will postpone the building of six coal power projects until 2030. If these were to be built, they could well be the last in the world. According to Ieefa’s Minh Thu Vu though, the chances are decreasing.

Provincial authorities and communities are becoming increasingly loud in opposition to coal, while solar and wind are becoming cheaper and more attractive to foreign investors.

Hanoi and Saigon are two of the world’s most polluted cities (Picture: 350.org)

The wild cards

Laos

The small Mekong river nation has historically relied mainly on hydropower but it’s coal use has been increasing over the last few years. It has recently proposed building two new coal power plants and exporting the power to Cambodia.

Bosnia-Herzegovnia

The Balkan country has coal power plants in operation in five locations and planned in seven more, primarily to protect jobs in state-owned coal mines. The plants have faced opposition and legal setbacks though, conflicting with its government’s stated green ambitions and proposed membership of the European Union.

The recent converts

Bangladesh

Until recently, coal exporters were banking on Bangladesh building more plants. But this year’s economic slowdown has highlighted the country’s expensive excess energy capacity and, as prime minister Sheikh Hasina urges leaders to do more to save Bangladesh from the impacts of climate change, she is keen to set a good example.

While five coal power plants are under construction and likely to be completed, 11 in planning are set to be scrapped and 13 converted to run on gas.

Bangladesh is vulnerable to climate change impacts (Picture: Joe Coyle/Flickr)

The Philippines

The Philippines has ramped up its coal-fired power capacity over the 2010s and has plants at a further 13 locations planned, mainly in the north. But coal faces opposition from the powerful Catholic church and the government this month declared a moratorium on new coal power plants.

South Africa

Under the Apartheid-era blockade, South Africa struggled to import oil and became hugely reliant on domestically produced coal. Mining remains a significant industry.

Now though, it has become the only major developing country to set a net zero emissions target of 2050. Two coal power plants currently under construction (Kusile and Medupi) are widely expected be its last.

Poland

Poland gets the vast majority of its electricity from coal and the country’s influential coal miners’ unions have been keen to keep it that way, despite pressure from the rest of the EU.

In September though, the government and unions struck a deal to stop mining hard coal by 2049. Poland’s biggest utility then announced it was trying to offload its coal assets and pivot to renewables. While critics say 2049 is far too late for a phase-out, the announcement makes it harder than ever to justify a new coal plant.

Japan

The world’s third largest economy currently gets about a third of its energy from coal. Incoming prime minister Yoshihide Suga recently announced he would “fundamentally shift our long-standing policy on coal-fired power generation” in line with a target of net zero emissions by 2050. Given this, it’s probably a question of how quickly the coal plants close, not whether new ones will be built.

South Korea

Days after its Japanese neighbour, South Korea confirmed a net zero commitment, fulfilling a manifesto promise from earlier in the year. Re-elected president Moon-Jae In said the country would be “replacing coal power generation with renewable energy”. Korea’s energy is currently about 40% coal-powered.

The post Who will build the world’s last coal plant? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The island of Pamban, a remnant of a land bridge that used to connect India and Sri Lanka, was not spared.

Fierce winds brought back memories of 1964, when a severe storm killed 800 islanders, overturning a passenger train and devastating the town of Dhanushkodi.

“We’ve seen many cyclones but that night, just for a few hours, it was really bad. We had little warning about how furious it would be,” says radio jockey P Lenin, who is 28 and hails from Pamban village.

“When I got information that if all boats on the northern side of the island were shifted away, they should be safe from the storm, I immediately got onto the radio and began broadcasting this message repeatedly.”

Almost all of the nearly 83,000 people in Pamban island depend on fishing for their livelihoods. The loss of a boat can be debilitating. Lenin’s repeated messages helped save numerous boats.

He broadcast through the night, warning his community of locations where electricity poles and trees had collapsed, potentially saving many from severe injuries or worse. Lenin says: “As soon as the eye of the cyclone passed us, I immediately went to check on the boats and help other fishermen bring them in safely. I’m as much a fisherman as I’m a RJ. I felt broadcasting on the radio was the most useful thing I could do for my people that night.”

A seaweed farmer holds up a rope with his harvested crop (Pic: CMFRI)

Kadal Osai (Sound or Music of the Sea) FM is a four-year-old community radio station that caters to the people of people of Pamban island. Founded by a leader from the fishing community, P Armstrong Fernando, community radio stations such as Kadal Osai have emerged as a reliable and easy-to-connect source of information for various rural communities in India, especially in the times of climate change.

The Indian government has weather warning systems but relies on partners to communicate the information to the people who need it most – the fishing communities. Community radios and NGOs perform a crucial role here, disseminating government alerts to coastal communities in simple terms and local languages.

Radio channels such as Kadal Osai FM go the extra mile, by putting hyperlocal alerts in a global context. “If we talk about climate change or the ice melting in the Arctic, no one really understands how it affects their lives but when we make the fisher people understand how their villages and livelihoods are affected by cyclones, extreme heat and sea erosion and connect that to climate change, then they realise the importance of the issue,” says Gayathri Usman, the radio station’s chief.

While the station caters to diverse interests, all of them are focused on one section or the other of Pamban island’s fishing community. Pride of place in their programming schedule is Samudhiram Pazhagu (Understand the Sea), in which scientists from marine research organisations in the region are regular guests.

The show offers solutions to the fishers for developing resilience to extreme weather by learning and investing in alternative, sustainable livelihoods.

“We have invited fishermen who practise sustainable fishing activities such as cage farming and seaweed cultivation onto our shows. Our hope is that more people will be inspired by them. We also want to provide people with the know-how to begin fishing sustainably,” says Gayathri.

“While the Covid-19 pandemic has affected us like everyone else, we have plans to organise multiple training camps for the woman of the island to learn seaweed farming and develop crafts such as making sea-shell jewellery as soon as we can.”

A Kadal Osai reporter interviews a woman in the market (Pic: Kadal Osai FM)

Suganthi Ravi, a 37-year-old fisherwoman, is a regular listener of Kadal Osai FM. She ventures to the shallow seas near her village for three months every year to practice seaweed farming.

“My husband is a fisherman and in the last 15 years or so his catches have been consistently reducing. While I’ve always practiced seaweed farming, I’m taking it up more seriously now and have also taken to making jewellery out of sea shells.” Ravi says her entire family loves listening to the radio channel.

She adds: “My children have found the educational shows and the shows talking about government grants and fellowships for children from the fishing community useful. I’ve found some of their episodes about alternative livelihoods very informative. More than anything else, they understand us and always talk in a jovial, entertaining manner which we really enjoy. Also, if we want to get in touch with them about anything, it’s very easy to do so.”

Jayakumar Rengarajan, senior scientist at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) says community radios such as Kadal Osai are playing a crucial role in developing resilience against the changing climate in the fishing community.

“As far as I know, this is the only community radio station in India catering exclusively to the fishing community. While we research and provide scientific perspectives to various issues concerning fishermen, it’s radio stations such as this that take this information to the people,” says Rengarajan.

The CMFRI is a leading fisheries research organisation and looks into diverse issues including but not limited to marine biodiversity conservation, mariculture and research on fishing patterns and fish availability.

Rengarajan adds: “Resilience is something that is urgently needed for India’s fishermen and we are developing sustainable fishing models which we want to take to the community in this region. This radio station, by interviewing our experts as well as communicating our ideas to the fishing community, is providing a vital service. Scientists like us can have all the information, but explaining complicated ideas to people in a way in which they understand is extremely important.”

Sibi Arasu is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru. He tweets @sibi123.

This article is part of a climate justice reporting programme supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund. You can find our policy on reporting grants here.

The post In this Indian fishing community, radio is saving lives and livelihoods appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nadir Godrej, managing director of Godrej Industries, which produces soap and vegetable oils, surprised viewers by answering questions about India’s growth path in verse.

The engineer and poetry enthusiast rhymed his way through a detailed set of policies to drive emissions cuts and switch to clean energy.

“A uniform carbon tax / Would protect all our backs,” he scanned, adding that a price of $60 a tonne “would surely get reduction done”.

Then he turned his attention to coal, which generates more than 60% of India’s electricity and is one of the biggest causes of global heating.

“Right now coal still looks cheap/ But the environmental cost is steep/ Both climate change and air pollution/ Show that coal’s not the solution,” said Godrej.

The poem went down well with the virtual crowd. “THIS IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING” wrote delegate Elaine Chao, in the chat box. “I have goosebumps. That was so good!” wrote Falgun Patel.

Moderator Divya Sharma, executive director of the Climate Group, India, was stunned. “I have no words,” she said.

Find a full transcript of Sharma’s questions and Godrej’s rhyming response below.

Q: What could be the key levers for low-carbon development in the Indian context, are we getting it right?

1^st Lever: Universal Carbon Price

It is no longer Climate Change

Within a tolerable range.

A crisis is what it’s about

With fires, floods as well as drought.

Every week a constant blast

Far worse than seen in the past.

If we must, we will adapt

Prevention though would be more apt.

There is a cost to adaptation,

It’s rising fast in every nation

As well as for the world at large.

And this will be a heavy charge.

In fact we should by now conclude

Prevention would be really shrewd.

It actually would cost much less

Indeed avoid a lot of stress.

A uniform carbon tax

Would protect all our backs,

Collected by each Nation state

But universal in its rate!

All GHGs would be fair game.

Every country should charge the same.

The benefit that this would yield

Would be a level playing field.

Competitors just wouldn’t care

Because this system’s very fair.

Just how high should this tax be?

A range of numbers we can see.

But Sixty dollars per metric ton

Would surely get reduction done.

For carbon this could be the rate

For others we would calibrate.

The appropriate rate we would select

Based on the Greenhouse Gas effect.

Based on today’s emissions rate

Quite candidly I should state

It wouldn’t be a trivial sum

But there’s no reason to be glum.

In dollars it would be Two Trillion

It is a lot but not a Zillion!

Compared to global GDP

The percentage is less than three.

Compared to taxes then again

The percentage is less than ten!

Of course some would then take a call

To reduce emissions not pay it all.

But bear in mind it’s not a cost.

For the economy nothing’s lost.

A UBI could be instated.

Some other tax could be abated.

And if this is indeed just so

The economy would still grow.

Don’t you think it’s very nice,

That there is no real price

Since very little would be lost

As adaptation has a higher cost?

2^nd Lever: Business action

But in the absence of a carbon tax

There is no reason to be lax.

Though business doesn’t find it nice

We already have a carbon price

Or rather we seem to have a range

That is ad hoc and very strange.

On coal we have a largish cess.

Our electricity rates are a mess.

Our motor fuels bear excise

With rates that regularly rise.

Climate change is now a curse

It steadily is getting worse.

Technology can save the day.

So far it has turned out that way.

As technology takes a leap

Green energy gets very cheap.

Keen observers quickly saw

That Solar also tracks Moore’s law.

Whether groundnut shell or bagasse

Our India’s full of biomass.

At first we thought we’d have to spend

But that’s not true, for in the end,

The more we thought, the more we slaved

We did invest but we also saved.

And solar is still getting cheaper

And as we do start digging deeper

In India it will hit the goal

Of being cheaper than even coal

In just a handful of years.

Already we and our peers

Are sourcing solar electricity

At lower rates than from the utility.

For quite some time we’ve been extorted

As their finances aren’t still sorted.

A silver lining can be seen,

All this incentivises green.

There are many paths that we can see

For achieving Carbon neutrality.

But the cheapest way is certainly

Through energy efficiency.

In times of plenty it was fine

To overuse and over design!

But now we find we always gain

If we only use our brain.

Real interest rates are very low

And high returns quickly flow

From any energy saving device.

For business this is very nice.

Not only are returns quite brisk

There’s also very little risk.

In India mandated CSR

Can help us go very far.

Multiple benefits is what one sees

With water projects or growing trees.

Good livelihoods are created.

Our carbon emissions are abated.

Trees planted at a river’s source

Maintain the flow throughout its course.

So many benefits we can see:

The preservation of biodiversity,

Now different species can be tried

Useful products can be supplied

Like biomass or edible fruits

And yet the trunk and the roots

Can sequester carbon, clean the air,

A win-win that is very fair.

3^rd Lever: Electrification and Transmission

From government, all that is sought

Is steady and robust support

To electrify our transportation

And ensure that the Indian nation

Vigorously does its bit

To efficiently store and transmit

Quite intermittent green energy.

With solar and wind there’s synergy.

Their peaks are not correlated

So storage needs can be abated.

Green energy buyers have been dazed

As wheeling charges have been raised.

Net metering comes at a cost.

Thus all the benefit is lost!

Instead of being incentivised

Green Energy is penalised!

Dear policy makers won’t you please

Let energy move with greater ease

4^th Lever: No New Coal Plants

Right now coal still looks cheap

But the environmental cost is steep

Both climate change and air pollution

Show that coal’s not the solution.

Green energy costs will steadily fall

So coal of course is not at all

Reliable for very long.

New projects could go very wrong.

Investing now can’t be a gain

If new projects can’t sustain.

Only fossil fuels with sequestration

Should be the rule throughout our nation.

Q: Are there perceptions that green growth is difficult to achieve and alternatively development cannot be green? What are your views on this, and what is the bargain that India can be making here?

A: No Bargain or Tradeoff

I’ve shown we can decarbonise

While we also monetise.                                

So never fall for either or.

Our hearts and minds demand much more.

Net zero emissions is in sight.

Businesses are seeing the light.

There’s no reason for our Group to fear

We’ll be net zero by next year.

And no there is no major cost

With our initiatives nothing’s lost.

There really is no give and take

We can both eat and have our cake.

All money spent is CSR

Which as I’ve shown can take us far.

So businesses must play a role

By setting an ambitious goal.

They can pay their climate dues

Without anything to lose.

Q: What role can businesses play in creating the demand for green growth and leading on low carbon development practices?

The Role of Business

Businesses can act one by one

But much more can be won

By also acting collectively

And doing so reflectively.

For WBCSD’s

Membership one now foresees

Science-based goals reached very fast.

The energy intensive, expectedly last,

Could manage with setoffs instead.

The others could well forge ahead.

Their partnership with CII

Means many more would get to try.

There is a role in advocacy

With good supportive policy.

A good global carbon price

Would solve the problem in a trice.

And nothing much would be lost,

Indeed there is no net cost.

For going green we miss incentives

At least get rid of disincentives!

And of course it would be great

If all stake holders collaborate

To develop technology that’s green.

We should, hand in hand, plan it

Preserving people, profit and planet.

The post Indian businessman rhymes the case for a universal carbon tax appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a pointed message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Guterres said scaling up solar energy would help solve two of India’s key development priorities: alleviating poverty and bringing power to 64 million Indians still lacking energy access.

Speaking at Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) on Friday, Guterres said ongoing support for fossil fuels around the world was “deeply troubling”. India is subsidising fossil fuels seven times as much as clean energy.

Modi recently launched an auction of 41 coal mining blocks to private investors. The prime minister said this would create hundreds of thousands of jobs at a time of economic fallout from Covid-19 and reduce India’s dependence on imported coal.

But Guterres warned rising temperatures caused by emissions from coal and other fossil fuels, would see India endure more intense heatwaves, floods and droughts, increased water stress and reduced food production if global warming edged over 1.5C by the end of the century.

“This strategy will only lead to further economic contraction and damaging health consequences. It is, simply put, a human disaster and bad economics,” he said. “Clean energy and closing the energy access gap are good business. They are the ticket to growth and prosperity.”

Extra UN climate talks mooted for 2021 to help negotiators catch up

Guterres, who has championed a green recovery to the pandemic, has become increasingly direct in his climate rhetoric. He is demanding the world’s largest economies, known as the G20, end fossil fuel subsidies, put a price on carbon pollution and commit not to build any new coal power plants or mines after 2020.

Last month, Guterres confronted China over its coal boom during a lecture at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, urging the world’s largest emitter to recover green.

However, few leaders are listening. Since the start of the pandemic, G20 countries have pledged $204 billion of support to fossil fuels. That is 52% of all public money committed to the energy sector, compared with 35% for clean energy, according the Energy Policy Tracker.

India, the world’s third largest emitter, has committed $8.9bn to fossil fuels, $6.8bn of it to coal, compared with $1.2bn for clean energy.

And yet, renewable generators have proved more resilient than coal, which bore the brunt of the collapse of energy demand caused by coronavirus restrictions, and is struggling against increasingly competitive solar prices.

Analysis by think-tank Ember found India’s share of wind and solar in electricity generation rose from 3% in 2015 to nearly 10% in the first half of 2020, while coal’s share fell from 77% to 68% in the same period.

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Half of India’s coal will be uncompetitive in 2022, reaching up to 85% by 2025, Guterres warned. “This is why the world’s largest investors are increasingly abandoning coal,” he said. “The coal business is going up in smoke.”

On Friday, the CEOs of 20 leading Indian businesses signed up to a “call for action” highlighting eight areas that could deliver “a step change in sustainable growth” as the government focuses on restarting the economy and addressing rising unemployment rates.

Accelerating the transition of the power sector to clean energy sources, electrifying transport and increasing research in clean technology such as hydrogen should be prioritised to create jobs, lower energy costs and cut emissions, they say.

Ajay Mathur, director general of Teri, told Climate Home News a number of Indian businesses and financiers understood that investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency provided both “short-term profitability and long-term sustainability”.

Guterres’ message, he said, comes at a time when Indian financiers are “starting to consider the possibility of a renewable-based future” – something unimaginable just five years ago.

India’s solar boom is threatened by anti-China trade tariffs

Guterres insisted investments in renewable energy would generate more jobs than in the fossil fuel sector and boost India’s recovery.

But although such investments would create healthier and higher quality jobs, they are not a ready alternative for the estimated 500,000 coal miners in India, Swati Dsouza, a New Delhi-based energy consultant, told CHN.

She cited a study published in the Environmental Research Letters journal in March which found that although nearly all coal mining areas in India would be suitable for solar power generation, installed capacity would need to increase 37 times to transition all of India’s coal miners who live in suitable areas to solar jobs.

“We already have a very big base of people employed in the coal sector and there is no transition plan for them,” she said, adding coal mining supported livelihoods and activities of entire towns in coal-rich regions. “What are we going to do about that?”

Despite efforts to scale up Indian solar manufacturing, the homegrown capacity remains limited, Dsouza said, adding solar installations jobs required a level of education that miners often lacked.

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While the relationship between China and India has been historically strained, in June a military standoff at the northeastern border, which left 20 Indian soldiers dead, escalated the conflict into a full blown trade war.

Since 2018 India has been imposing anti-dumping measures to protect local solar manufacturers from cheap Chinese imports. The government is now doubling down with a new round of custom duties on cells and modules imported from China and Malaysia, where some Chinese companies have set up shop to avoid trade barriers. 

According to the Power and Renewable Energy Ministry, the plan is to impose up to 25% duties on solar modules and a 15% tariff on cells during the first year, increasing them to 40% and 30% respectively in the second year. While these penalties were meant to kick in only after the previous measures had expired, the government has decided to extend the existing safeguard duties for another year, basically taxing all imports twice.

Bangladesh considers scrapping 90% of its coal power pipeline

The idea is to wean India off its dependency on Chinese goods, paving the way for Indian manufacturers to fill the gap. The measure squares with the vision of a ‘Self Reliant India’ promoted by prime minister Narendra Modi as part of India’s post-Covid recovery. 

India is aiming to reach 100GW of solar capacity by 2022. As of 31 March 2020, only 37GW were installed. Professionals worry that drastic, short term measures will harm both developers and manufacturers, further slowing India’s progress.

Subrahmanyam Pulipaka, CEO of the National Solar Energy Federation of India (NSEFI), said that while there can’t be a meaningful energy transition without reduced reliance on imports, the Indian government should focus on a long term strategy.

“The 110 projects currently in the pipeline, accounting for around 30GW of capacity, will either have to be exempted from the new duty structure or should be compensated,” he said, given the budgets had been calculated with the previous lower prices in mind. NSEFI has put the request to the government, but it’s yet to receive an answer.

According to the research firm Mercom India, in the last three months of 2019, even with the current safeguard tariffs in place, 85% of all solar modules and cells were imported from China, with 5.5% and 4% coming from Vietnam and Thailand.

India eyes private investment to open 41 new coal mines

India’s dependence on China is so deep that manufacturers won’t be able to replace imports with homegrown tech in just two years. And while foreign investors are increasingly attracted to Indian solar installations, Indian manufacturing doesn’t spark the same interest.

“It is high time that the government of India comes up with a stable and sustainable policy that will attract considerable foreign investments [in the manufacturing field],” Pulipaka said.

Dhruv Sharma, CEO of Jupiter Solar, the second largest manufacturer in India, echoes this sentiment. “What we require is a protection for a reasonable period of time, at least five years,” he said, “to allow us to become financially stable and then invest in new technologies.”

Without long term protection, he said, “it is abundantly clear that no individual company can stand up to the might of Chinese solar industry, which is heavily supported by the government.”

Over the past two years, said Rishabh Jain, a market intelligence specialist with the Council for Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in Delhi, the government has collected more than 50 billion rupees (£507 million) of safeguard duties. “They should have ideally used that money to support domestic manufacturing, but that has not happened,” he said.

As things stand, he said, India is not equipped to meet the requirements for solar modules through domestic production, if it wants to meet its 2022 goals. “Setting up new facilities will require time,” he explained. “There are companies such as ReNew Power who plan to set up big manufacturing facilities, but I think they will also be waiting for the right signals in terms of long term policy, otherwise it will be very difficult for them to convince their investors.”

For more energy and climate change stories from South Asia, sign up to Lou Del Bello’s Lights On newsletter.

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Preliminary findings, shared exclusively with Climate Home News, showed that only China, India and four other nations in the Group of 20 leading economies were committing more public money to clean energy than to polluting sectors.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity… to use government funding, government subsidies, loans, to reshape our future,” said Ivetta Gerasimchuk, Sustainable Energy Supplies lead at the International Institute for Sustainable Development think-tank, one of the groups involved.

G20 nations are committing trillions of dollars to combat the economic slump induced by Covid-19.

But “the overall trend is that… there is more money going into fossil fuels than into clean energy,” she told a webcast organised by the Stockholm Environment Institute, another of the 14 research organisations.

“What we see is pretty much what countries did before the Covid crisis they keep doing. In this sense the crisis… has just exacerbated the trends we had before, unfortunately.”

Jamaica becomes first Caribbean nation to submit tougher climate plan to UN

The findings are due for publication on 15 July, at a new website, energypolicytracker.org.

Preliminary data shared with CHN showed that, as of 1 July, national and subnational-level public money commitments to fossil fuels dominated over cleaner energies in the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea and Turkey.

The G20 countries where commitments to clean energy exceeded those to fossil fuels were China, India, Japan, Germany, the UK and Brazil.

In the five remaining G20 members – the European Union, Italy, Mexico, Argentina and South Africa – there was so far a lack of data or it was hard to disentangle support levels.

Gerasimchuk also said there were very many “shades of green”. Supporting battery-powered cars in a shift from petrol and diesel engines would be good for the climate, for instance, but not if the electricity used to recharge them came from coal rather than solar or wind power.

China was a borderline case, with a big rail bailout package tipping the balance towards green investment.

Michael Lazarus, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute’s US Center, said that “while much is on hold because of Covid, there is yet to be a sign of a reset in most countries” to help achieve goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Lazarus was lead author of a Production Gap report last year that found the world was set to produce about 50% more fossil fuels out to 2030 than would be consistent with the Paris goal of limiting warming to 2C, and 120% more than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C.

Airlines’ climate obligations postponed as UN body endorses industry proposal

“We expect to find a similar disconnect” between climate and energy policies in an update of that report later in 2020, he said. He said global carbon emissions may fall 8% this year from 2019 because of the economic slowdown but that they “could easily rebound strongly” in coming years unless governments shift to more sustainable policies.

Adam Matthews, Co-Chair of the Transitions Pathway Initiative representing major institutional investors, said that major European oil companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell or Total, had started to engage with the idea of net zero emissions in what he called a “very significant shift” from past reluctance.

But he said companies also needed governments to act. “You can’t expect companies to act in the absence of regulation,” he said.

Among the most radical steps by a government, Costa Rica has imposed a moratorium on oil exploration. But it is now facing calls to reassess the policy to raise money to recover from the Covid-19 crisis, said Andrea Meza Murillo, director of the climate change directorate at the Ministry of Environment and Energy.

“It’s risky times right now for all of these policies,” she said. “We need to show we can generate green jobs”.

The 14 expert organizations behind the upcoming study are International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Oil Change International (OCI), Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the Columbia University in the City of New York, Forum Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft (FÖS), Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos (INESC), Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE), Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), Legambiente, REN21 and The Australia Institute (TAI).

The post Big nations aid fossil fuels more than clean energies amid pandemic, researchers find appeared first on Climate Home News.

However the move threatens valuable forests and indigenous land rights, while expanding a polluting and financially challenged industry.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the auction of 41 coal mining blocks to private companies on Thursday, in a major shake-up to the sector which is dominated by state-controlled Coal India. Modi said the move would help reduce India’s reliance on energy imports and develop the eastern and central parts of the country.

“People of these districts are aspiring for development but have lagged behind,” he said, adding 16 districts in these areas had “huge stocks of coal” but people had not been able to benefit from this mineral wealth.

Modi said commercial mining would reduce the need for people to migrate far from their homes to seek employment, giving people jobs extracting and transporting coal. He said the country would spent $6.5bn on new coal infrastructure.

“Extra revenue through coal production will be used for public welfare schemes” in those regions, he added.

The auction has been described as a “desperate” move by the government to boost investments in the coal sector despite its declining future.

UK aid and foreign ministry merger raises fears for politicisation of climate finance

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the coal power sector had cash flow issues, with most plants running well under capacity. Coal generators’ problems only deepened when energy demand collapsed by nearly 30% during the lockdown.

While India remains the world’s second largest coal consumer,the falling cost of renewable energy has made it consistently cheaper to generate electricity with wind and solar energy than new coal. An analysis by Ieefa found that renewables delivered more than two-thirds of India’s new generating capacity additions in the 2019-20 fiscal year.

“Growth in coal demand is diminishing,” Sunil Dahiya, analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air told Climate Home News. “So, even if this coal is mined where is demand?”

Dahiya warned that an aggressive push for coal mining risks creating stranded assets which cannot be sold to power generation companies. “That would be another economic disaster,” he said.

And yet, the auction has lower barriers to entry than ever before, making it easier for private companies to enter the bidding process, said Rohit Chandra, a coal expert and a fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research – a move he described as “desperate”.

He told CHN only a handful of private companies in India had sufficient liquidity to invest in these coal mines. “If you invest in a coal mine today, it will take 2-5 years to open and for the company to receive dividends. There is going to be a gradual transition away from coal and in 5-7 years you are unlikely to see new coal power plant opening.”

As the energy market slowly starts to turn its back on coal, “who is ready to take this risk?” he asked.

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The location of some of the 41 mining blocks raises environmental and human rights concerns.

Aruna Chandrasekhar, an independent journalist who has written extensively on India’s coal sector, told CHN a majority of the mines for sale in the auction were located “in environmentally fragile zones and indigenous land that should not have been acquired in the first place”.

This includes the Hasdeo Arand, one of the largest contiguous stretches of very dense forest and an elephant habitat in central India. It is home to the Gond indigenous group. At least four new mines are being sold in the forest despite local opposition to ongoing mining activity.

Consultations and environmental assessments are expected to take place after the auction, “ruling out people’s ability to veto the auctions before they happen,” Chandrasekhar added.

The forest was once earmarked as a “no-go” area for mining – a decision reversed in 2011 to allow Indian conglomerate Adani to mine coal in the forest. In 2014, The National Green Tribunal which deals with environmental issues ruled against the forest clearance. The case went to the Supreme Court which called on the government to reassess its mining policy in the forest – a demand that has so far been ignored.

The auction raises the threat of new displacements, which Chandrasekhar said had been “a chronic act of violence” against indigenous people. There was “little track record of rehabilitation” in the area, she added.

In a statement Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, a coalition of pro-democracy groups, called for mass protests opposing the new mines in the mineral-rich eastern state of Jharkhand. The coalition said mining “especially in corporate interests, does not improve well-being of the people” and called on the state government to side with its people against the acquisition of their land without consent.

“Opening the state for domestic and foreign corporate mining entities will further destroy the livelihoods and environment,” the statement said.

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The world’s second largest coal consumer has seen its energy demand collapse by nearly 30% during the lockdown which started on 25 March, with coal generators bearing the brunt.

In 2018, the International Energy Agency forecast Indian coal demand would more than double by 2040 – a major challenge to international efforts to prevent climate breakdown.

With the right policy framework in place, coal generation in India could peak much sooner, analysts have told Climate Home News.

“I think we will see the peak in coal use for power generation this decade,” said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies for the Australia and South Asia region at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa).

“There is potential for India to really surprise the global community and contribute to the decarbonisation story while doing it in a very cost-effective way.”

Comment: After the oil crash, we need a managed wind-down of fossil fuel production

There was political backing for renewable energy prior to the Covid-19 crisis, emboldened by rapidly falling costs.

At the UN Climate Action Summit in New York last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to double India’s renewable target to 450GW by 2030, up from around 87GW installed capacity today. The bulk will come from solar panels.

The cost of adding solar electricity stands at about 2.5 rupees per unit generated, compared with around 4.5 rupees for new coal capacity, according to analysts. Even coupled with more expensive batteries to store electricity for after dark, solar energy was auctioned at a cheaper price than new coal earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the coal sector has been faced with cash flow issues over the past few years, with most plants running well under capacity.

An analysis by Ieefa found that renewables delivered more than two-thirds of India’s new generating capacity additions in the 2019-20 fiscal year.

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Before the outbreak, Sunil Dahiya, analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said there was “a clear signal that coal will not fuel future electricity growth,” which will mostly be provided by renewables.

“Now the pandemic makes that trend much clearer,” Dahiya said. “Coal capacity could peak before 2025,” he said, noting a peak in coal generation will take longer.

The competitive cost of renewable energy is not the only reason for the sector’s resilience in a period of low demand.

In India, the sector benefits from a “must-run” status compelling power distribution companies to use solar or wind energy whenever it is generated.

Powered by sun and wind, renewable generators are not exposed to the same supply chain disruptions as fossil fueled plants.

“The resilience of the renewable model was established during the lockdown,” Abhishek Dangra, senior director at S&P Global Ratings, told Climate Home News.

“The pandemic tipped the scale in favour of renewables for cleaner and cheaper power,” he said, adding that coal’s share in power generation will continue to decline in the medium to long term.

For Dangra, 2027 could mark the peak in capacity when India “will likely not need any new coal plants”.

Renewables most resilient to Covid-19 lockdown measures, says IEA

In recent years, private investors have also been increasingly reluctant to invest in Indian coal infrastructure with much new finance coming from state-backed banks and companies. On the contrary, global investors are ready to invest “aggressively” in new renewable infrastructure, Buckley said.

“You can’t build a power plant if it’s not funded and if it’s not going to provide a return. And from a financial perspective, you can’t justify a new coal-fired power plant,” he added.

“The pandemic has accelerated the debate about what choices India will have to make” for its energy sector, Swati Dsouza, a New Delhi-based consultant at the Brookings Institute told CHN.

Despite the favourable conditions for boosting renewables, Dsouza did not rule out an uptick in coal generation and new capacity once the lockdown lifts, saying coal will continue to meet baseload demand. “Renewables have not been a substitute for coal,” she said. None of the new coal plants in the pipeline for construction have so far been cancelled.

IMF chief: $1 trillion post-coronavirus stimulus must tackle climate crisis

Buckley said he was confident the Indian government could deliver on its target of 450GW of renewable energy by the end of the decade despite the huge effort needed to scale up the sector.

The pace of renewable deployment and the growth of the Indian economy will remain key factors in determining the shape of the transition. It will also depend on the grid being ready to match variable solar and wind generation with consumer demand.

As Prime Minister Modi called on the nation to turn off their lights for nine minutes at 9pm on 5 April in a call for solidarity against coronavirus, there were concerns the grid might collapse.

“This was a huge test of resilience for the grid,” Buckley told CHN. “But it passed with flying colours.”

With a looming global recession and an Indian government strapped for cash while fighting the pandemic, there can be no trillion-recovery package expected to accelerate India’s clean energy transition.

For Buckley, that will require Modi to think “laterally” about ways to boost renewable deployment “and marshal all the private capital on it”.

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Plug-in vehicles emit less greenhouse gases than petrol and diesel models over a car’s lifetime – that includes the mining of metals or lithium for batteries, manufacturing, driving 150,000 kilometers and finally scrapping, a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability on Monday found.

Some past studies have questioned the greenness of electric vehicles (EVs), especially because of high emissions linked to making batteries.

“In most of the world, in countries accounting for 95% of road transport, EVs would reduce emissions compared to average petrol cars,” lead author Florian Knobloch, of the Environmental Science Department at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told Climate Home News.

Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

The study said it made sense to drive an electric car rather than a fossil-fuel vehicle in major markets including China, the United States and almost all of Europe.

The exceptions, where EVs need electricity generated from coal-fired plants to recharge, were India, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria, it said.

Transport, mostly by road, accounts for about a quarter of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

“But it’s not like driving EVs is a silver bullet solution for transport. It’s much better not to drive a car at all,” Knobloch said of the findings by a team also including researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge.

As electricity sources shift from fossil fuels to renewables such as hydro, solar and wind power, EVs would become relatively more attractive. India, for instance, is shifting to solar power so EVs would make sense within a few  years, he said.

India has previously committed to raise the portion of renewable into its energy mix to 175GW by 2022, with the aim of boosting it to 450GW in the long-term.

The benefits of driving EVs are highest in nations with few fossil fuels in electricity generation. “Average lifetime emissions from electric cars are up to 70% lower than petrol cars in countries like Sweden and France (which get most of their electricity from renewables and nuclear),” the authors wrote.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global electric car fleet exceeded 5.1 million in 2018, up by 2 million since 2017. China led sales with 1.1 million in 2018 but, worldwide, EVs are still less than 1% of the global car fleet.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), which campaigns for cleaner transport in Europe, said its research was more favourable to EVs.

“EVs are better than petrol or diesel cars in every country in Europe. This also includes Poland,” Lucien Mathieu, a transport and e-mobility analyst with T&E, told CHN.

Mathieu added that grids were likely to be a lot greener in 15 years’ time – the expected lifetime of a vehicle – if governments stick to pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

There are also massive differences between the carbon footprint of manufacturing, he said. Tesla, for instance, uses clean solar power at a Gigafactory in Nevada to assemble battery packs and reduce emissions.

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In partnership with the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF), we are supporting original reporting that focuses on communities, mainly in developing nations, who are suffering most from climate change even though they have contributed little to the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Articles will put a spotlight on CJRF’s goal of supporting “communities first hit, first to respond, and first to adapt to climate change”. We will highlight women, youth and indigenous peoples on the front lines of climate change who are creating and sharing their own solutions for resilience.

The ideal story for us will capture the attention of our international audience with a combination of on-the-ground reporting from affected communities, scientific evidence, innovative and rights-based solutions, and political tension or controversy.

The grants will cover competitive rates and reasonable travel expenses, to be negotiated in advance.

We plan to publish eight articles under the project, lasting until 30 November 2020. At least half of the stories will focus on CJRF’s priority areas – the Bay of Bengal, East Africa and the Arctic – where climate change is already affecting landscapes and livelihoods.

In the Bay of Bengal, communities in Bangladesh and the Indian states of Orissa and West Bengal are at risk from heat waves, erratic rainfall, and storms surges. Rising seas may force relocation, but how are communities working to delay any moves, or to ensure they move on their own terms?

In the drylands of Tanzania and Kenya in East Africa, more variable rainfall linked to climate change is disrupting food production. How are communities innovating to safeguard their crops, livestock and livelihoods?

In the Arctic, a thaw is threatening the hunting livelihoods of indigenous peoples in CJRF´s focus areas of Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Can they adapt?

If you are a journalist with at least three years’ experience, please send us your pitches. Local reporters will be given preference, although we would also consider pitches from travelling reporters for stories in areas where local reporting is harder to source.

Your pitch should explain the top line of the story and essential context in no more than 150 words. If we like the idea, we will ask for more detail. Briefly explain what sources you would interview and any travel required. Our focus is on written articles but we are also open to multimedia projects.

When pitching for the first time, tell us a bit about your journalism experience and background. Include links to one or two recent stories you are proud of. Editors will work closely with you to give feedback and advice.

For transparency to our readers, each piece would note that it was produced with support from CJRF along with a link to our editorial guidelines that outline how we interact with grant makers while ensuring independence.

You must have fluent spoken and written English. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have some awareness of climate change themes.

Please send your pitches to acting editor Megan Darby md@climatehomenews.com. We will review the first pitches in mid-March and subsequent ideas in coming months and will publish until November.

This article has been amended to update the contact details.

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The summit has been personally convened by UN secretary general António Guterres as a moment for political leaders to show their willingness to increase their climate plans and deepen the decarbonisation of their economies.

Guterres asked governments to come ready to announce the plans they will set next year.

But in separate statements published on Tuesday, the world’s first and fourth largest emitters put the onus on rich countries to fulfil their commitments to mobilise $100 billion per year by 2020 for developing countries to cope with the impacts of climate change.

What is the UN climate action summit?

As the largest developing country, China “also enjoys the right to receive funds”, it in a statement published by the ministry of ecology and environment.

It said developed countries should “implement and strengthen” and “honour the commitment” to “support the developing world in addressing climate change”.

In its statement, India’s ministry of finance said its plan was set on a “best effort” basis and that “finance holds a key for all its actions”.

With uncertain finance and technology provision, “India can only aspire to implement the already promised climate actions”, the statement said. It added that India “may only be in a position to elaborate or clarify its post 2020 climate” plan at the summit.

Instead, India said will be “better placed” to “suitably recalibrate [its climate plan] through re-examination and improvement,” in 2023, when the next global stocktake to ramp up ambition is due to take place.

The UN summit will include a discussion of climate finance, but it has not been given the primacy of Guterres’ call for ambition.

Beijing set out its action on the summit’s nine work tracks, but remained ambiguous on what it might bring to podium on Monday.

French court finds climate activists stole Macron portraits out of necessity

China reaffirmed its commitment to implement the Paris Agreement, but fell short of making any commitments on its climate targets for Monday’s summit.

Its contribution to climate change, it said, includes the country’s 2020 and 2030 climate targets and the establishment of “an economic system that is green and low-carbon cycle development”. It added it would “actively implement emission reduction commitments, and strengthen climate adaptation”.

“In light of tough economic and geopolitical prospects, China is pondering its options on climate,” Li Shuo, senior energy and climate policy officer at Greenpeace China told Climate Home News, adding that Beijing’s position paper left “plenty of wiggle room for a decision to double down on climate targets in 2020”.

Last week, UN special envoy for climate change Luis Alfonso de Alba said he was “very confident” that China will come to the summit “with a much higher level of ambition”, referring to a statement it issued with France and Guterres on the sidelines of the G20.

China and allies challenge UN chief’s climate vision

However, the stronger language in the G20 statement in which China committed to “update” its climate target “in a manner representing a progression beyond the current one” and publish a long term decarbonisation strategy by 2020, is absent from its position paper.

Even the language of China as a “torchbearer” for climate action previously used by president Xi Jinping was absent, with instead references to China as “an active participant and defender of the multilateral climate process”.

“True leaders rise to the challenges of their time,” warned Li. “If geopolitical challenges have left Chinese leaders unsure, the country’s over-achievements of its climate targets and the improving air quality should offer confidence,” he said.

Both China and India’s positions echoed a statement issued alongside Brazil and South Africa last month, highlighting the need for developed countries with greater historic emissions to shoulder greater responsibility.

For Xi’s government, this principle is “the basis for mutual trust” and the “conditions for the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement”, according to its latest statement.

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Luca Bergamaschi, a senior associate at think-tank E3G, said China and India were developing clean technologies some time at a faster pace than developed countries.

“In a truly globalised world, this old north-south divide does not make sense,” he said.

“Although there is still a high responsibility for developed countries to provide more climate finance and lead with climate action, there is a need for much more cooperation to create open, ‘zero-carbon’ markets and to accelerate technology uptake and green finance reforms.”

The post China and India demand cash for climate action on eve of UN summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

UN special envoy on climate change Luis Alfonso de Alba met with Indian government officials in Delhi on Tuesday to discuss what the country will bring to the New York event.

It comes after UN secretary general António Guterres sent a letter to all heads of state, asking them to come to the summit with plans to upgrade their 2030 ambition and set a course for carbon neutrality by 2050. Countries are due to formally submit updated climate plans to UN Climate Change by 2020.

India is the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, the US and EU. Its carbon footprint is growing fast as the government encourages both coal and renewable generation to expand access to energy among its 1.2 billion people.

Under the Paris Agreement, India pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy 33-35% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. But forecasts show India is likely to significantly overachieve one of its commitments.

Guterres asks all countries to plan for carbon neutrality by 2050

A recent report by India’s Central Electricity Authority shows the country is already close to achieving its 2030 target to get 40% of power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources – more than a decade early – and could reach 65% in March 2030.

“I am aware that India has achieved a lot and it may surpass its Paris agreement targets. I hope that this will translate into enhanced [climate commitments],” de Alba said in a briefing with national media.

“That is a decision the Indian Government should take in the coming day,” he said, adding that “more needs to be done on agriculture, air quality and other issues”.

De Alba hinted at a commitment from the Indian government to increase its climate targets but said he wasn’t aware of the specifics. “It’s for the government to announce that at the summit,” he said.

Following the meeting, India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar tweeted the government was “walking the talk” on climate action.

Riding an electric tuk tuk in Delhi, announcing the Clean Air Initiative today – one of many actions to be presented at the #ClimateAction Summit. Calling on governments at all levels to get on board! Read more: https://t.co/UNAsWDqQKf pic.twitter.com/hwcOqwsTYs

— Luis Alfonso de Alba (@ladealba) July 23, 2019

Not everyone is optimistic India is ready to ramp up ambition. Guterres set a 7 August deadline for countries to communicate what they will bring to the meeting.

J M Mauskar, a former Indian climate negotiator and co-chair of the UN climate talks in 2012, told Climate Home News: “I am not sure any large country will be able to announce anything new about their [national climate contributions] by that deadline…

“But it’s entirely possible that by September there will be some degree of elaboration and clarification of the [climate] goal – note that I am not talking about enhancement here.”

Mauskar was equally sceptical about India’s capacity to adopt a carbon neutrality by 2050 target.

“In India, carbon neutrality is not being talked about as a firm target but as an aspirational goal,” he said, adding that achieving net zero emissions would depend on the availability of finance and technology.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

For a 50% chance to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C of warming by the end of the century, the world needs to become carbon neutral by 2050, according to the latest scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If rich, developed countries were to achieve carbon neutrality earlier than 2050, it would give poorer countries longer to make the shift. But while the UK and France have each set a 2050 net zero emissions target in law, no major economy has adopted a more ambitious timeline.

Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of the New Delhi-based  Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) told Climate Home News “if the UK is saying [net zero by] 2050, India will say we are going to do it by 2070”.

“I would like India to be [carbon neutral by] 2050 and the UK to be doing aggressive work in the next 15 years, with all the money and resources [it has]” to achieve net zero earlier, he said.

Other campaigners in India are calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lead by example and establish a viable pathway to net zero emissions by 2050.

This would make India “an example for other rapidly developing economies to emulate,” said Damandeep Singh, director of CDP India, an initiative to get corporations disclosing and managing climate risk.

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Elsewhere, Guterres’ efforts to push countries to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 have been welcomed by campaigners.

In China, Li Shuo, senior climate and energy policy officer at Greenpeace, praised Guterres’ asks for being “perfectly in line with the Paris Agreement”.

“However politically audacious it may look, his letter is no more than a simple reminder to the countries of their own obligations,” he told CHN, adding Guterres’ summit will be a test for China and other major emitters.

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In a 55-page manifesto published last week, Congress vowed to take on the country’s air pollution and ramp up its defences against natural disasters. It promised to empower campaign groups and communities, including forest dwellers facing eviction under the current administration.

India is set to hold elections in phases from 11 April to 19 May and count the votes on 23 May. Opinion polls predict a slim parliamentary majority for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has put national security at the heart of its campaign.

Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, said it “recognises that air pollution is a national health emergency”. The party committed to “significantly strengthen the National Clean Air Programme” and impose emissions standards across industrial sectors, although these were not quantified.

According to Greenpeace, choking smog kills 2 million Indians every year and costs the economy an estimated 3% of GDP.

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Environmental activists and analysts welcomed the move. “The fact that air pollution is being treated as a national emergency sends a right signal in the sense that you are definitely acknowledging the problem,” Swati D’souza, energy policy analyst at think-tank Brookings India, told Climate Home News.

Pujarini Sen, a climate and energy analyst for Greenpeace, also cautiously greeted the manifesto. Indian political parties largely failed to deliver on their environmental promises of the 2014 election, according to one recent study.  But “for civil society, we now have a peg on which to hold them accountable,” Sen told CHN.

For its part, BJP promised to reduce pollution by at least 35% over five years in India’s 102 most polluted cities. Greenpeace said that ignored 139 other cities potentially breaching national air quality standards and urged both parties to make the National Clean Air Programme legally binding.

It was perhaps on its relationship with civil society that Congress most distinguished itself from the BJP, Sen said. Where Modi’s regime has stripped thousands of NGOs of their licences and blocked them from receiving foreign funding, Congress described civil society as “a pillar of parliamentary democracy”.

The opposition showed solidarity with some 1.9 million forest-dwelling households threatened with eviction since the Supreme Court denied them land rights in February. Congress would “make local communities the custodians of forests and shareholders of forest resources,” the manifesto said.

The BJP manifesto does not mention evictions or the Forest Rights Act, which, according to recent media reports, the government is overhauling in a manner that could further curtail rights of the people.

On clean energy, BJP reiterated its target to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022, while Congress had an unquantified goal to increase the share of solar and wind power in the mix.

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“If you would like to stabilise global warming at 1.5C, the key message is that net CO2 emissions at the global scale must reach zero by 2050,“ Valérie Masson-Delmotte, one of co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s research on the target, said on Monday.

Such a target would require urgent, Herculean changes around the world, criss-crossing the energy, agricultural and transport sectors. Yet, scientists are adamant that countries can limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels if they can summon up the political will.

“The message is: over to governments at this stage: we’ve told you the scientific facts, the evidence, the cost, it is up to the governments now to decide what to do with it,” Jim Skea, another one of the co-chairs of the report, said.

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The world will need to flex every institutional and diplomatic muscle it has available.

“Countries will need to collaborate,” he added. “We don’t have a top down agreement at Paris, it’s bottom-up. But they need to take collaborative and coordinated action if we’re actually going to achieve a goal of 1.5 degrees warming.”

“Saying option x or option y is not the way this report is framed,” Skea said. “The word ‘or’ does not work in relation to the ambition of 1.5 warming. The only linking word you can use is ‘and’. We can make choices about how much of each option we use, and trade off a bit between them. But the idea you can leave anything out is not possible.”

That means going gang busters for renewables and reforestation, but also using unproven technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, and some that are even less developed, like direct air capture, or enhanced weathering of rocks.

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Whether or not certain individual countries can go net zero by 2050 is another matter. Among developing countries, China and India are key. According to the International Energy Agency, China was the largest carbon emitter in 2015, coughing out 28% of the world’s emissions. Coming third after the United States, India accounted for 6% of the CO2 pie.

Scientists are divided over their potential to wean themselves off carbon by 2050.

Roberto Schaeffer, one of the authors of the report focusing on sustainable development, ruled out a net zero scenario by 2050 for both countries.

“Probably the only countries that, perhaps, can get to zero by, or right after, 2050 are the ones with high potential for afforestation, reforestation, soil gains, pasture intensification, and biofuels with carbon capture and storage [Beccs],” he said.

“Brazil, other parts of Latin America, and parts of Africa may be good candidates for that. But probably not China or India.”

Like Schaeffer, report author Diana Ürge-Vorsatz raised concerns about India’s reliance on coal. However, she stressed the country could likely go net zero “very soon after”, providing solutions like Beccs that allow negative emissions are in place.

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China’s economic reforms are the “most forward looking” around, Ürge-Vorsatz said. According to research by the University of East Anglia, emissions may have already peaked before its Paris pledge.

Other governments are moving in the opposite direction. In the US, Australia and now seemingly Brazil, leaders are set to actively undermine progress just when scientists say the world needs to accelerate as one. In response, authors and campaigners urged individuals and non-state actors to take a step forward for every one backward by governments.

Masson-Delmotte highlighted lifestyle choices as “important elements of feasibility”, citing the impact of diet on land use. Skea also reminds of the potential for travel behaviour to sway emissions in the aviation industry.

Individuals, states, regions, cities and companies all need to take climate change seriously, said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace.

“In a world where there are governments that are not delivering, the pressure on those non-state actors is going to grow,” she said.

Graphic from the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C

There have been myriad ‘subnational’ climate initiatives in response to Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. New York, which pledged in September to invest $4 billion of its pension funds into climate-focused projects, is but one example of local leadership on climate change.

Morgan asked what feasibility really meant and who non-action on climate change was feasible for? “The report spells out quite clearly who loses from climate change,” she said “It’s the vulnerable and poor. That’s quite a choice.”

“Decision makers also need to think the feasibility of living in a world of living above 1.5C. That’s 420m people frequently exposed to heatwaves. And 2 million people exposed to sea-level rise,” she said.

“It’s really important that people understand that this report gives us hope,” Rueanna Haynes, a delegate to the IPCC meeting for St Kitts and Nevis, one of the Carribean islands gravely exposed to climate impacts, said. “I’ve heard people interpret it as almost giving us a basis to say: What’s the point? It can never be done.

“But for us this report is telling us: Yes, this situation is a difficult one. Yes, the situation is only going to get worse. But we have choices and there are options, and the report sets out the timeframe in which we need to act over the next 30 years. We have to act.”

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