Research area: Climate Policy

The Ecological Costs of Doing Business: Environment, Energy and Climate Change

Summary

What perspective did the BJP government bring to the link between environment, energy and climate change on the one hand and development on the other, and what consequent actions has it taken? In this essay published in ‘Re-forming India: The Nation Today’, Penguin India, the authors assess the government’s actions in areas of environment, energy and climate change with a view to interpreting its track record.

Focusing less on environmental outcomes and more on the changes in direction introduced by the government, Dubash and Ghosh explore four themes. First, they examine the government’s focus on the ‘cost of doing business’ and ask whether reducing this cost has come at an environmental price. Second, they analyse cases in which an environment and energy agenda was driven by political imperatives, such as around energy access or Ganga rejuvenation. Third, they explore whether and how the government has addressed the emergent big picture environment and energy questions that will shape India’s future, beyond immediate regulatory changes. Finally, they examine its diplomacy in the areas of climate change and energy, and reflect on what the accumulated record implies in terms of India’s environmental governance.

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India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development

Introduction

As science is increasingly making clear, the problem of climate change poses an existential challenge for humanity. For India, this challenge is compounded by immediate concerns of eradicating poverty and accelerating development, and complicated by its relatively limited role thus far in causing the problem. India in a Warming World explores this complex context for India’s engagement with climate change. But, in addition, it argues that India, like other countries, can no longer ignore the problem, because a pathway to development innocent of climate change is no longer available. Bringing together leading researchers, activists, and policymakers, this volume lays out the emergent debate on climate change in India. Collectively, these chapters deepen clarity on why India should engage with climate change and how it can best do so.

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National Climate Policies and Institutions

This chapter, published in ‘India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development’, Oxford University Press, sets the stage for a discussion on policies by reviewing the emergence of national policies and national institutions. This discussion starts with the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) and its various Missions. It discusses how Indian climate policy was frequently dictated by the pursuit of ‘co-benefits’ that bring both climate and development gains, and the emergence of a multiple objectives framing as a useful guide for policy formulation. This leads to a discussion of the formulation of India’s NDC for the Paris Agreement. Significantly, the chapter also covers the spread of climate institutions, which while weak and in their early stages, provide the spaces within which climate discussion is likely to be mainstreamed, if at all, in coming years.

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India’s Evolving Climate Change Debate: From Diplomatic Insulation to Policy Integration

How is India engaging the climate change challenge? This introductory chapter in ‘India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development’, Oxford University Press, explains the changing context for climate change debates in India, from one focused on diplomatic concerns of equity and responsibility for the problem, to one equally concerned with understanding its development implications. The chapter lays out the rationale for why the book examines climate change impacts, negotiations, politics, policies and integration across sectors, briefly discussing key themes. It ends with four overarching messages on the contours of the Indian climate debate.

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More priorities, more problems? Decision-making with multiple energy, development and climate objectives

Summary

The Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement pose new conceptual challenges for energy decision makers by compelling them to consider the implications of their choices for development and climate mitigation objectives. This is a nontrivial exercise as it requires pragmatic consideration of the interconnections between energy systems and their social and environmental contexts and working with a plurality of actors and values. There are an increasing number of indices, frameworks and academic studies that capture these interconnections, yet policy makers have relatively few ex-ante tools to pragmatically aid decision-making. This paper, based on a collation of 167 studies, reviews how multi-criteria decision approaches (MCDA) are used in energy policy decisions to explicitly consider multiple social and environmental objectives, and the conceptual usefulness of doing so. First, MCDA can be used to distil a finite set of objectives from those of a large number of actors. This process is often political and objectives identified are aligned with vested interests or institutional incentives. Second, MCDA can be used to build evidence that is both qualitative and quantitative in nature to capture the implications of energy choices across economic, environmental, social and political metrics. Third, MCDA can be used to explore synergies and trade-offs between energy, social and environmental objectives, and in turn, make explicit the political implications of choices for actors. The studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate that the use of MCDA is so far mainly academic and for problems in the Global North. We argue for a mainstreaming of such a multi-criteria and deliberative approaches for energy policy decisions in developing countries where trade-offs between energy, development and climate mitigation are more contentious while recognizing the data, capacity and transparency requirements of the process.

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India and Climate Change: Evolving Ideas and Increasing Policy Engagement

Summary

India is a significant player in climate policy and politics. It has been vocal in international climate negotiations, but its role in these negotiations has changed over time. In an interactive relationship between domestic policy and international positions, India has increasingly become a testing ground for policies that internalize climate considerations into development. This article critically reviews the arc of climate policy and politics in India over time. It begins by examining changes in knowledge and ideas around climate change in India, particularly in the areas of ethics, climate impacts, India’s energy transition, linkages with sustainability, and sequestration. The next section examines changes in politics, policy, and governance at both international and national scales. The article argues that shifts in ideas and knowledge of impacts, costs, and benefits of climate action and shifts in the global context are reflected and refracted through discourses in India’s domestic and international policies.

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National climate change mitigation legislation, strategy and targets: a global update

Summary

Global climate change governance has changed substantially in the last decade, with a shift in focus from negotiating globally agreed greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets to nationally determined contributions, as enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This paper analyses trends in adoption of national climate legislation and strategies, GHG targets, and renewable and energy efficiency targets in almost all UNFCCC Parties, focusing on the period from 2007 to 2017. The uniqueness and added value of this paper reside in its broad sweep of countries, the more than decade-long coverage and the use of objective metrics rather than normative judgements. Key results show that national climate legislation and strategies witnessed a strong increase in the first half of the assessed decade, likely due to the political lead up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, but have somewhat stagnated in recent years, currently covering 70% of global GHG emissions (almost 50% of countries). In comparison, the coverage of GHG targets increased considerably in the run up to adoption of the Paris Agreement and 89% of global GHG emissions are currently covered by such targets. Renewable energy targets saw a steady spread, with 79% of the global GHG emissions covered in 2017 compared to 45% in 2007, with a steep increase in developing countries.

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India’s energy and emissions future: An interpretive analysis of model scenarios

Introduction

As a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, but also as a developing country starting from a low emissions base, India is an important actor in global climate change mitigation. However, perceptions of India vary widely, from an energy-hungry climate deal-breaker to a forerunner of a low carbon future. Developing clarity on India’s energy and emissions future is challenged by the uncertainties of India’s development transitions, including its pathway through a demographic and urban transition within a rapidly changing policy context. Model-based scenario analyses provide widely varying projections, in part because they make differing assumptions, often implicit, about these transitions. To address the uncertainty in India’s energy and emissions future, this letter applies a novel interpretive approach to existing scenario studies. First, we make explicit the implied development, technology and policy assumptions underlying model-based analysis in order to cluster and interpret results. In a second step, we analyse India’s current policy landscape and use that as a benchmark against which to judge scenario assumptions and results. Using this interpretive approach, we conclude that, based on current policies, a doubling of India’s CO2 energy-related emissions from 2012 levels is a likely upper bound for its 2030 emissions and that this trajectory is consistent with meeting India’s Paris emissions intensity pledge. Because of its low emissions starting point, even after a doubling, India’s 2030 per capita emissions will be below today’s global average and absolute emissions will be less than half of China’s 2015 emissions from the same sources. The analysis of recent policy trends further suggests a lower than expected electricity demand and a faster than expected transition from coal to renewable electricity. The letter concludes by making an argument for interpretive approaches as a necessary complement to scenario analysis, particularly in rapidly changing development contexts.

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