India unveiled its National Action Plan on Climate Change yesterday,
detailing programs that include strong support for solar energy, and
reasserting the nation’s reluctance to adopt mandatory emissions cuts
under a new international climate treaty currently being negotiated to
replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
Developed nations, like the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada,
have mandatory emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol, while
developing nations, like India and China do not. Developing nations
want these two countries in particular, which have fast growing
economies and greenhouse gas emissions, to accept mandatory emissions
targets in a successor treaty to Kyoto.
However,
both India and China say that increased energy production is crucial to
lifting their populations out of widespread poverty, and that they do
not want to curb the growth of energy supplies by imposing emissions
limits.
India’s Action Plan calls for a boost in solar power to 1000
megawatts (MW) by 2017. The plan also suggests setting progressive
targets, requiring operators of the nation’s energy grid to buy more
renewable power.
The plan also calls for tax incentives to create strong
efficiency measures in the commercial and housing sectors–enough to
save 10,000 MW by 2012.
"Our vision is to make India’s economic development energy efficient,"
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said. "Our people have a right to
economic and social development and to discard the ignominy of
widespread poverty."
Other measurs within the plan encourage water conservation, sustainable agriculture and sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem.
Singh said India wants to make a gradual shift
from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, and suggested the
nation is still open to coninuing international negotiations.
"Thus the Plan is not
a fixity," he said. "It is meant to evolve and change in the light of
changing circumstances."
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