Amid the global consensus in Dubai to transition away from fossil fuels, India welcomed the agreement though new avenues of opposition may have opened that it will have to address in future climate negotiations.
“We support the proposal of the Presidency on the COP decision document while reiterating the fundamental principles enshrined in the Paris Agreement to take action for global good in accordance with national circumstances,” Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, who led the Indian delegation, said on Wednesday during deliberations.
Over the years, India’s position has been that it is a large, developing country that accounted for 3% greenhouse gases emitted historically (1850-2019) compared to the United States (25%) and European Union (17%). Its per capita emissions, at 2.5 tonnes of CO2, were below the world average of 2.6 tonnes. However India’s development trajectory and population also meant that it had become the third-largest greenhouse-gas emitter, among countries, after the United States and China. This had led to calls that for keeping global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5C over pre-industrial era, major polluters — India and China despite their developing country status — too had to reign in their emissions. It is this sentiment that was captured in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Since then, India while steadfast in its position that it needed to exploit its most abundant and available energy resource, coal, has also embarked upon expanding its solar and wind energy capacity to produce electricity and commit to a net zero state by 2070.
However at the Glasgow COP in 2021, it agreed — under immense pressure and along with other countries — to a ‘phase-down’ of coal use. India has protested against the singling out of coal, when several countries, including developed ones, have been silent about their expanded use and production of oil and gas. India is a net importer of both oil and gas.
On Wednesday, when the gavel came down on the 28th edition of COP-28, both oil and gas were officially accorded the same degree of villainy as coal. However language from the Glasgow COP of “accelerating the phase-down of unabated coal power” remains.
Subsistence agriculture
The Dubai Consensus, however, for the first time brings in mention of methane, a non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas that is more potent, in its heat trapping effect, than carbon dioxide. A line says: “ [Parties should be]...Accelerating and substantially reducing non-carbon-dioxide emissions globally, including in particular methane emissions by 2030.” While the global conversation around reducing methane deals with emissions from industrial processes, nearly 75% of India’s methane emissions are from the agricultural sector. While not a new finding, India has in the past managed to defend its methane emissions because of it resulting from largely subsistence agriculture. “There is no differentiation in this text on industrial and agricultural methane and those could be bones of contention for the future,” said Vaibhav Agrawal, Fellow, Council on Energy Environment and Water.
Other analysts say that despite the parity among fossil fuels, the text gave a free pass to natural gas, because of its relatively lower carbon emissions relative to coal, designating it as a “transition gas” that could be relied on during countries’ transition to renewable energy.
“The reference to “transitional fuels” explicitly gives gas producing countries the licence to sell more gas rather than invest in renewable energy,” said Ulka Kelkar, Executive Director, World Resources Institute. “It also exonerates the developed countries from making up the finance gap so far, though it recognises that the gap in adaptation finance is “widening” and that doubling the current low levels of adaptation finance will be insufficient.” The finance gap refers to the billions of dollars that developed countries must provide to developing ones to adapt and fortress against present and future climate change.
