parley: is india doing enough to combat climate change? - energy storage system price

With the Paris Agreement on climate change coming into effect in 2020, what development paths can India seek to align its social goals and energy needs with commitments made under the United Nations convention? In the run-
Ahead of the UN Climate Action Summit in New York in September, he has been working to raise his ambitions and accelerate action. T.
Jayaraman and Professor, Chair of the Centre for Science, Technology and Society, Institute of Social Sciences, Tata
Navroz Dubash, professor at the Center for Policy Studies and coordinator of Climate, Energy and Environment Initiatives, discussed the fairness of the global climate regime, new opportunities, and what India can do for green growth.
The discussion was chaired by G.
Ananthakrishnan.
How serious is the climate change problem today? Prof. T.
Jayaraman: Climate change is certainly the worst global environmental crisis we face.
It is not the only environmental problem, but it is unique in many ways.
Scalar properties from global to loca.
In many ways, it can be said to be the most direct.
Perhaps, I would just like to add that this will be a common assessment of many social classes in the world.
But in the world, quite a few people in the global community have not seen the same.
This is perhaps one of the most serious aspects of dealing with this issue. Prof.
Navroz Dubash: I think climate change has been with us for 25 years, at least 30 years, since 1993 or before.
This is a very strange question and it is difficult to understand how to discuss it.
To some extent, climate change has become a survival problem for many people. A problem that has the potential to undermine the conditions of production and living, so the problem will not be surpassed, but will certainly penetrate into various other problems.
For many others, climate change is a distant problem, overwhelmed by more pressing problems.
But this ignores the link between the current problem and climate change.
In India, for example, if you think about the pain of farmers, climate change can make things worse, and if we think about the challenges of water, climate change can make things worse.
In India, there is no way we can think about anything that has nothing to do with climate change.
Global warming
The industrial level has reached about 1 degree Celsius.
India is not responsible for carbon dioxide stocks in the atmosphere, but are we capable of not doing anything?
Can we wait for action from developed countries or should we actively take our own measures? Prof. T.
Jayaraman: I don't think there is the word "either or the other" on it.
We must recognize that climate change is a global problem of collective action.
If a country is glorious in extreme circumstances and cuts its emissions to a minimum, it will be useless if other countries do not follow suit.
Despite their great sacrifices or efforts, they will still suffer from the consequences of climate change.
Similarly, while waiting for others to do something, not doing something by themselves is not an option, especially in terms of adaptation.
I don't think the more mitigation measures India will take will reduce the risk of India.
This is not a local exchange.
More relief, less adaptation-
For India in India
This is not how it works.
We must have good intentions, show it in action, do what it needs to do, but on the other hand, we must do more than what we do today to call on developed countries to take responsibility
Forgetting their words, the actual performance is bad.
They are far from achieving the contribution determined by their country (NDC)targets.
This is recognized.
We don't even join in some countries, such as the United States.
We need to put climate change and global warming at the top of the foreign policy agenda.
This is, I think, a key initiative that we need to take.
I think the sooner we do this, the more benefit we will get from our own climate action. Prof.
I certainly agree with Professor Dobash.
Jayaraman said they did really poorly compared to the capabilities, wealth and commitment of developed countries.
But as you said, with the state we are in right now, IPCC 1.
5 the report basically says that at the current rate at which we produce greenhouse gases, we have actually looked at it for decades before we run out of existing resources.
The degree to which we must turn things around on a global scale is staggering.
The rapidly rising countries are part of the story, but that doesn't mean that countries that have already discharged a lot and built infrastructure shouldn't actually create space in a sense, countries like India
So where is India?
This is a bit of a dilemma.
We are also one of the most vulnerable countries.
This is how I see it.
First, there are things that India can do, which may bring development benefits and mitigation benefits.
How do we design our city, for example: we want more sustainable cities, we want less congested cities, more public transportation, because we want our city to be more livable.
These cities will also be low-carbon cities.
For example.
Therefore, we need to consider maximizing these potentials.
The second way to think about this is the nuance of the professor.
Jayaraman's view is that more mitigation measures in India do not mean that India can maintain these benefits.
Because at the end of the day, we account for only 6-7% of global emissions.
But we recognize that the global carbon system is an interconnected system.
So what we have to think about is the global transition to a low-carbon system, where there is a spillover effect, a change from one economy to another, a political change in one place, political change in another place.
Therefore, how we transform to a low-carbon economy is very important.
India is a large economy, market and second largest population, and it can play an important role in these positive spillover effects.
India promised in the Paris agreement to reduce its GDP emission intensity by 33-
35%, 20 to 2005 higher than the level of 25%.
Are we in sync with what we need?
The goal is to keep the temperature below 2 °C or 1.
5 ℃, how to adapt to the contribution determined by the Indian state? Prof. T.
Jayaraman: there is a problem with the form of your question.
You can do whatever you want with your NDC.
It's okay.
The question is, as a developing country, in the matrix of development plans for all other countries, where is India appropriate and what is the development plan for other countries?
This will be the starting point.
Should we do more?
What are we doing in the planning of things?
I think we did a good job.
I think the problem for India is hedging against the future, not just what we consume now or what we expect to get immediately.
What do we want?
Terms for the future, and how much of the carbon space we need to hedge?
This is a game in progress and it is not a static number.
It changes over time.
We need to constantly monitor and learn.
But I repeat that for our national development center, although we have performed well, we cannot make more commitments at the National Development Center until we see serious action at the international level.
On September, at the special session on climate at the UN General Assembly, I think India should make it clear that we will not play unless you are not clear enough, and you should also walk.
This is not the case at all.
Look at how developed countries react to the children's protests.
I don't like the sport because I think it is superficial in many ways, but they show some public attention.
Look at the reaction.
We should stand up against this.
Indian civil society hopes to hold similar meetings in India, such as children in schools who oppose the government.
We should not do so.
At the international level, we should tell the governments of developed countries to see what your children are telling you and why don't you take action?
We should do more in India. there are still many things about our development.
People are very concerned about this issue.
India's second two-year update report to the climate convention is a very good compilation of a wide range of initiatives.
We are home to a wide range of non-governmental organizations that have taken various initiatives.
But now we have to move to the world and take global action.
This should perhaps be the contribution of our new, more national decisions. Prof.
Navroz Dubash: Let me think about this in a slightly different way.
The Paris agreement basically says, every country, please let us know what you can do in your country.
So it would be a relatively low set of commitments, in which case the level of commitment in India is quite high and would not push the envelope far and do very little.
So how do we know if this commitment is ambitious?
There is no good way to know.
An industry of people is working to set benchmarks;
This effort by the NDCs benchmark does not give us a single answer-the answer depends on the chosen benchmark.
The idea of the Paris agreement is to move countries towards a low-carbon economy. our idea is that every country will see that the cost of doing so will not be too high or too difficult, moreover, development interests will encourage countries to accelerate their pace.
The promise in the ideal world is to set the floor instead of the ceiling on the floor
Countries will meet and are expected to exceed those commitments.
In the case of India, we may exceed the promise, because due to urban congestion and air pollution, we want to move in the direction of low carbon in any case, except for climate change.
Now, from a political point of view, we can try to get armed.
Turn around the rich world.
We can continue to do so, and we should continue to do so financially, etc.
They are absolutely stubborn and they have given up their responsibility.
But at the end of the day, India is a very fragile country.
What we have learned over the past 20 years is that countries will not take further action because of international pressure.
Of course, this is not the case for developed and industrialized countries.
They go further because they find a way in their enlightened self
Interested in doing so.
So the game has moved from the negotiating table to a series of discussions in one country after another.
What interests me is that in Mr.
Trump and his negative attitude towards climate change, you guys are calling for a green new deal in the US.
These politics, what they're going to solve, will push what's going on in the United States.
We should keep the pressure, but realize that our voice is not what determines what's going on there.
The interesting question is in India, what is the story?
We need to start taking climate change more seriously, especially in terms of adaptation, because we do have a lot to focus on.
In terms of mitigation, I do not think we have fully explored the cross-cutting areas between the low-carbon agenda and the development agenda.
I think we should do more.
If you look at the declarations of the political parties in these two countries, climate change is a bit offensive in the last small issue, but it is not actually considered clearly.
In my informal conversation, they still stay in the language that says we still need more fossil fuels to boost more growth, in an era of falling solar prices and falling storage prices, this is an open question.
In any case, this is not a debate that has been resolved, but we need to be more active in this debate. Prof. T.
Jayaraman: with regard to NDCs, I think we would have a lot of risk if we were to use India's current figures on consumption, energy as the benchmark we needed.
We are still a laggard in development. -
India still has a huge development deficit.
Unfortunately, there is very little exploration in eliminating the cross-cutting relationship between the development deficit and real adaptation.
So whenever the drought happens, when climate change is really normal, some people shout "climate change" around ".
We always keep our farmers at the mercy of drought.
So I think that in the process of adaptation, our focus should be on understanding what our development deficit is.
Development is the first line of defense against adaptation, which will really begin as global warming intensifies, and that is what we must prepare.
At the same time, a new, distracting argument is emerging.
Recently, there was a newspaper from the United States. S.
India says it lost 31% of its potential GDP growth due to global warming from 1960 to 2011 years.
Even if it was published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences, I don't believe it.
This idea has been put forward before, especially the professor.
In a paper entitled "tropical underdevelopment" by Jeffrey Sachs, Dani Rodrik and others like Arvind Subramaniam made it clear that the idea is simply incoherent.
If you do not consider the most important institutions, you will get a variety of correlations if you simply study temperature and GDP.
So there is a problem with this idea.
First of all, what we really need to invest in is our conceptual agenda.
What is development and adaptation?
How much relief do we need to do?
What is the burden?
Take an electric car.
Everyone says that electric cars are a good thing, considering the cost of fossil fuels in terms of health and so on, cheaper than traditional transportation.
Use disability to adjust the concept of life years.
But it is indeed for the users of public transport to pay for the well-being of all those who are still driving their cars.
So this argument that electric cars are cheaper does not work.
From the cost of kilometers per car, electric cars are actually more expensive.
We need to explore this better. Prof.
I fully agree with Professor Dobash.
Jayaraman believes that the entry point for this dialogue should be the development deficit, which is a series of complex issues.
For example, we need to improve and find a cleaner way of transportation. In fact, we should not draw such a conclusion, that is, it should lead to more electric vehicles-the first priority is improved and more accessible public transport.
We need to understand these development deficiencies from a multi-objective perspective, from an economic and access perspective, from the perspective of local pollutants such as air pollutants, climate change and mitigation, and the livability of cities, we need more.
A multi-faceted analytical framework.
Usually, our policy process is to find a solution to the problem, not the other way around.
I agree that we need to think more about this.
Yes, we should challenge these very high statements, which produce amazing numbers and we do not have to treat them as gospel.
But at the same time, we should not retreat when considering the possibility of future impact.
There is growing evidence that the impact of the future may be considerable.
We need to internalize it in our process.
For example, we have a bunch of national climate action plans, which is a reasonable start, but no one would claim that they are a completely credible response to the threats facing India.
As far as policy is concerned, we are losing an opportunity to go beyond investment, we want to expand the coal plant and the number of our cars is increasing. . .
We talked about Shorty. Prof. T.
Jayaraman: Look at Maruti, it's pulling out of the diesel.
Why does it produce diesel?
Not because of diesel pollution, but because the bs vi specification of diesel is not commercially feasible.
So, when you use the word "we", we have to separate this "we.
If you look at micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME)
The last census collected energy data, about 50% of SMEs (
Registered)
Do not use any power at all.
So, if one says we spend too much, which "we" is he talking about "?
The other half of the MSME department that uses electricity.
But in fact, a large part of the electricity is consumed by a small number of enterprises.
So, when we say we're investing, which "we" are we talking about "? Vis-à-
Take Japan as an example, India's investment in coal energy.
They had 43 gigawatts of thermal power at the time of the Fukushima accident, after which they planned to increase by 32%.
Then there is criticism, but they still plan to add 21% after that. Fukushima.
A small country.
Germany is building gas pipelines from Russia.
So, what is "we" as India, as "we" as a global society?
People need to break this "we" discourse and discuss who, what part of society, where, for what purpose and consequences.
Then maybe people will be able to deal with the problem. Prof.
Navroz Dubash: We can't use our current level of energy consumption in any way as a benchmark for India's future needs.
Our per capita level is very low and incompatible with the development and lifestyle we want in India.
So the dilemma we are facing is that we want to increase energy use as we move globally towards a low-carbon system.
At the same time, there is a big challenge. . .
Jobs are provided when the power and capabilities of automation and artificial intelligence are growing.
How does India view increasing energy, limiting carbon emissions, providing jobs and addressing local environmental issues?
Don't forget that India is doing very poorly from the perspective of local environmental issues.
All of these rankings make us 177 out of 180 countries, and so on, with a comprehensive look at air pollution issues, water, plastics.
We should not see it as a single technological transformation.
We need to think about jobs, energy and pollution together.
Do we have an answer to this question? Prof. T.
Jayaraman: there's one thing about the global scene.
Although we may want to move to a low-carbon system or economic transformation globally, except for China, which I don't quite understand, the rest of the world, I think, we are only seeing a change in coal and gas.
The transition has not yet been completed.
If it is not gas, it is oil of all kinds.
Related energy.
By the age of 30, what we want most is not low carbon, but low carbon.
So in this case, in a broad sense, for India, if we expect our economy to transition to a fully renewable-energy-driven economy, that will not happen.
I don't think there is any such technology, there is no such business opportunity.
If that's the case, we'll see other people do it and they don't.
Some economists warn that stranded assets will be created, but it doesn't seem to stop anyone.
We need to be responsible for the use of fossil fuels in all economies globally and in every country.
But the world is still moving towards liberalization and deregulation.
So who will do this?
A lot of moral chest-
The beating is happening, but I don't think it happened.
We must also avoid the "left" version of superpower syndrome in India.
Some people think that we can or should be a moral superpower of some kind, not an economic or security superpower.
I don't think we should play this card when we talk about climate and energy sources. Prof.
Navroz Dubash: I agree, and also because the idea that India is some sort of Gandhian role model for the world is not credible, because our environment is so bad.
Look at the state of our resources, the state of our air pollution, the state of water pollution.
How can we be a role model for others?
I agree that this is not the way we should go.
But what we can do is try and use the fact creatively that we are the underachievers, that we are not building most of our infrastructure, that we still have a lot of cities to build, we can build these facilities to think about our manufacturing and employment base in a way that considers new technologies.
New technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence could also be a threat.
But now we need to take into account these factors and our environmental crisis situation, including climate change, to build for the future.
In fact, we are not stuck in a disruptive pattern, which may be an advantage. Prof. T.
Jayaraman: I appreciate the professor, though.
Dubash's argument about not being locked in, on the other hand we didn't build much.
Therefore, we are also very slow in infrastructure construction.
As we all know, the manufacturing plan in India is much less than its ambition.
Our innovation footprint is low and our ability to create new technologies is lower.
Our improvements to all deployments of renewable energy or energy technologies and energy use mechanisms are fully imported.
We don't have the manufacturing value chain behind it, except in rare cases.
That's why, in my opinion, our most important requirement in India is to hedge the future.
I don't think that will happen to the Paris agreement.
When you leave the country to do what they want and they feel they have the ability to do it, they all get shy and don't seem to be able.
I think the Paris Agreement has worsened the problem in India.
We have allowed to systematize a system with process accountability but no target accountability. Recently the [
UN climate conference
The COP24 of Kat Wiz has developed a complex set of rules because it does very little.
It's a great set of rules, but it doesn't tell you that you have to do more.
We need to break the deadlock that the Paris agreement has brought to us.
We are the party.
But how to deal with this issue in the near future will be a real challenge for us.
What could be India's viable climate diplomacy or politics under or outside the UN framework? Prof.
Navroz Dubash: I have to be slightly different from the professor's point of viewJayaraman.
Climate Games are now firmly shifting to a series of national dialogues.
The process of the Paris agreement is a repeated process, countries put something on the table, they try to implement it, they see if they can do it more easily than they think, they are back at the global level.
It's a two-level game, but the motivation is at the national level.
The state will not become an armed man-
Distorted by international pressure
We can try, but it's driven by the self of enlightenment. interest.
The global role will play an important role in technical cooperation and spillover effects.
One of the big success stories is the fall in renewable energy prices, driven by a domestic German plan that basically supports global renewable energy prices.
The interactive effect of this multinational may change the rules of the game.
Maybe we will see something similar in energy storage technology.
India must play a role in diplomacy, but our diplomatic game must build a development model that takes into account all our needs, including climate change, and continue to put pressure on the West on issues such as finance and technology.
I think a lot of action is going to take place in India and we are facing a lot of climate-related issues in our local environment. Prof. T.
Jayaraman: Everything we do at home should be based on the development deficit.
In this context, we should do so no matter what we can explore or do.
For example, how can we ensure that the productivity of our major food crops is doubled.
This is feasible, and of course other countries are doing better.
Why don't we focus on this?
If we do something specific, we will see the relationship between agricultural productivity and climate change, and we will learn something for the future.
We need to pay attention to such details.
I am very disappointed with the private sector in India.
After more than 25 years of liberalization, the world is no longer what it was in 1989.
India is very different.
But I don't think the private sector has caught these issues.
They are willing to donate and are willing to tell farmers how to be sustainable and invest in such activities outside their companies.
However, to establish their own model of sustainable development and sustainable development within the factory boundary, the driving force of innovation ,[on this]
They also need it.
We should promote this at home.
In the context of climate change, poverty eradication is becoming more and more important and urgent, simply saying that our current pace of progress is not enough.
If we set these national priorities more accurately and correctly, we will participate more reasonably in the international process of climate change.
I don't think we do. so-
Engagement with the international process may be due to the fact that we have not identified our own local priorities as clearly as possible.
How about addressing inequality in energy access?
Is it fair to impose a carbon tax on conspicuous consumption? Prof. T.
Jayaraman: Old Adam Smith noticed something.
A very important observation called division of labor.
There are people who produce, people who consume but provide services, people who form links, etc.
Before we consider carbon purely from the perspective of consumption, we should also consider it from the perspective of production.
For example, you are privileged because Kerala does not have so many emissions, and you punish Jharkhand and Dhanbad for so many emissions.
This is not entirely fair.
I think the inequality in consumption is unfair.
Is it production consumption or personal consumption?
The two are not the same thing.
The main problem is the consumption of other products, not personal consumption.
It's not the only problem that people want bigger buildings and cars.
I am a little wary of a carbon tax approach that goes beyond a bit.
In a limited range, yes.
I think we should also have clear rules.
We should, to some extent, return to the so called orders that are despised --and-
But it works.
We have to explore this more than always looking for fiscal measures, monetary and tax measures, etc.
Can you give an example of such regulation? Prof. T.
Jayaraman: slow down car registration like Singapore.
It's not even a great new idea.
Reduce it simply. Prof.
Navroz Dubash: India needs to take climate change more seriously than we do and recognize that this is a common problem.
No development is without climate change.
However, this does not translate into an uncritical acceptance of current fashion in terms of policy approaches.
A carbon tax may be part of the mix, but we have to really resist the idea that we start with this answer rather than exploring the scope of the solution.
If the approach we have adopted is that India must deco2 while achieving our development goals, then it is important that the direction of the new investment is to deco2, but taking into account possible synergies and trade
Deviations from other development goals.
It is unclear whether a carbon tax must be the best way.
We should be a little smart about this, not start with the solution, start with the direction we want to travel and think about a set of instruments.
We must also bear in mind the challenges of implementation and our limited capacity for implementation.
We should invest in building institutional capacity to solve this problem.
For example, our pollution control board does a very poor job of water and air conditioning, and if you start to use some kind of carbon regulation to increase their burden, this carbon regulation also takes into account synergies and trade
As they develop, they will collapse under heavy pressure.
The carbon tax may be useful to some extent, and I don't think it's a silver bullet.
We have just begun to discuss what approach and package we need, and of course, old-fashioned regulation should not be dismissed a priori in any way.
Navroz Dubash is a professor and coordinator at the Center for Policy Research on climate, energy and environment initiatives. T.