India will set the narrative on how to grow responsibly and sustainably, said the secretary at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Leena Nandan. Speaking at a side event on ‘India’s journey towards sustainable cooling’ at the India Pavilion, on the sidelines of the COP28 in Dubai, she said that nothing is a better display of this resolve than India’s current status in terms of Nationally Determined Contributions for climate mitigation.
Elaborating, she said, “When India had announced NDCs in 2015 we envisaged 33-35 per cent emission intensity reduction by 2030, but we have pushed its efforts in a big way. While India has continued to grow, it has also progressively decoupled emissions from economic growth and this has resulted in the achievement of a 33 per cent reduction in emission intensity of GDP in 2019 itself.”
The Secretary credited this success to a parallel push India has given to renewable energy for its requirements.
“We have gone on to scale up our climate ambitions. The NDCs updated last year reflect our concern that we indeed as a global fraternity need to do much more to tackle climate change,” she added.
“Going forward, we need to bolster our efforts, be at the forefront of change, and conduct research on coolants that would be most appropriate to Indian climatic conditions.” This research, she added, should be matched with the dialogue with industry to cause quick off-take and scaling up of this technology.
The India Pavilion at COP28 showcased India’s success in achieving targets and its roadmap towards creating sustainable cooling for overall environmental sustainability. India, at COP26 in 2021, committed to an ambitious five-part “Panchamrit” pledge. They included reaching 500 GW of non-fossil electricity capacity, generating half of all energy requirements from renewables, to reducing emissions by 1 billion tonnes by 2030.
India also aims to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 45 per cent. Finally, India commits to net-zero emissions by 2070.
