The Naveen Patnaik government is going in for a carbon budget, a policy means to keep the emissions reduction targets under control, for the financial year of 2024-25.
In 2018, Odisha became the first State to initiate the climate budget analysis called Climate Change Innovation Programme.
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As per proceedings of high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary P.K. Jena, a broad consensus was built regarding the methodology, time plan, and implementation strategy for the carbon budget.
As the full-fledged annual budget is likely to be presented in mid-June 2024, the exercise should be completed by May 2024, the meeting resolved.
It mentioned that in addition to six identified sectors such as transport, industry, energy, agriculture, forestry, and land use selected for the carbon budget, urban land use would be included as a critical sub-sector under the land use sector for data collection and analysis.
After all departments designate a nodal officer, the carbon budget exercise would be taken forward with relevant data collection from each sector and consultation with all stakeholder departments.
For technical support, Odisha is likely to partner with a multilateral agency like World Bank, FCDO, and UNDP having expertise in the field of carbon budget.
At present India is working on an ambitious plan to reduce carbon intensity of the economy by 45% by 2030, over 2005 levels and total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now to 2030, and achieve 500GW non-fossil energy capacity by 2030, and the target of net zero emissions by 2070.
Odisha is currently implementing State Action Plan on Climate Change 2021-30 undertaking actions for growth and development while mitigating climate change and decoupling the economic growth from the emissions.
A State Energy Plan and a State Energy Efficiency Action Plan have been developed. Concept of climate smart village initiative has been adopted to empower rural communities to mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change.
Subsequent to intense consultation, the State government is likely to establish realistic and measurable emission reduction targets and ensure that the targets align with national commitments.
Top secretaries admitted that collection of relevant data from concerned sectors would not be easy and relying the available data would also be a challenge for the team as year-wise data might not be available.
