India succeeds in reducing emissions rate by 33% over 14 years
reuters.com
reuters.com
> "India's rate of emissions intensity - the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted for every unit increase of gross domestic product (GDP) - fell by 33% from 2005 to 2019"
Sounds to me that this is a case of "decrease of the increase", rather than overall reduction. But please correct me if I'm wrong.
Still, good to see that India is pulling the foot off the accelerator… now, let’s see how long it takes to get that mid-article chart to less than 75% of electricity generation being via oil and coal.
India has huge potential to leap frog development hurdles by going all-in on renewable energy. It is almost always sunny, and large areas are suitable for wind power. There has been talks for decades about covering water canals with solar roofs (which reduces water evaporation, while keeping the solar panels cool as win-win), but I dont know if that was implemented.
When I talk to people back home, there is a sense of "the economic super powers of today kept us suppressed during industrial age and did all the damage to the climate. Now asking us to hit the brakes while not paying their fair share by cutting their own emissions is unfair! ". I can symphathise, but it is not a question of who does. It can simply be seen as an opportunity.... Imagine if there is too much power when the sun shines and wind blows that power is essentially close to zero-cost? How many industries would love such an opportunity?
Having been to both I can say that, although there’s more wind generation per unit area in Denmark - that 5.5 GW is spread over a country that’s roughly 1/3rd the area of Tamil Nadu — I was dodging turbine blades everywhere I went and India is definitely doing an impressive job increasing renewables, and I’m hopeful that will substantially improve. My problem with the headline is that it implies that the overall emissions rate has dropped that substantially, but what’s dropped is the emissions rate per unit of economic growth… which is good, but the effect on the overall rate trend is severely dampened when you note the speed at which the GDP is growing. In a period of high enough GDP growth the lowest currently attained emissions density rate would still result in a net increase of emissions… the headline should just be more precise.