India has set the most distant target of any big nation to become carbon neutral, dismaying negotiators at Cop26.
British officials said that they were pleased by pledges for emissions reductions this decade made at the conference by Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, but disappointed by the target to be net zero by 2070, 20 years later than the UK. They had been hoping India would at least follow China with a 2060 target.
India’s announcement had been eagerly awaited because it has the third largest overall emissions after China and US, although it has the lowest per capita emissions of the world’s leading economies. One British official described Modi’s announcement as an “opening play” and admitted that the UK and other developed countries could be forced to accelerate their own emissions reductions to persuade him to bring forward the date from 2070.
“It may well be that we go for 2045 in the UK and other countries [do the same] and that moves India,” the official said, although he added that in reality India would probably reach net zero long before 2070.
Modi, 71, who has been in power since 2014, also said that India would increase its 2030 target for installed capacity of “non-fossil energy” — mostly solar — from 450 to 500 gigawatts and it would get half of its energy from renewable resources by the same year. He announced that the carbon intensity of India’s economy — the amount of emissions produced per unit of GDP — would be reduced by 45 per cent by 2030. The previous goal was 35 per cent.
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Modi also demanded that developed countries provided $1 trillion “as soon as possible” to help developing countries respond to climate change. He condemned wealthy nations for not honouring their pledge, which was made before the 2015 Paris agreement, to provide $100 billion a year by 2020. British officials believe this broken promise may have been a factor in India setting such a distant net zero target.
Modi said: “We all know this truth that the promises made to date regarding climate finance have proved to be hollow. The world ambitions on climate finance cannot remain the same as they were at the time of the Paris agreement. It is India’s request that developed countries make available $1 trillion of climate finance as soon as possible.”
Asked about the 2070 target, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, the head of the Indian diplomatic service, told The Times that India was still a developing nation trying to alleviate widespread poverty and that the goal would represent a sharp fall in net emissions and was a “very significant” commitment. “We are essentially a developing country,” he said. “Our focus is on bringing millions of our citizens out of poverty. We are working night and day to ease the standard of living for our citizens. We constitute 17 per cent of the world’s population yet contribute only 5 per cent to global emissions and yet we are contributing very readily to the entire overall issue of climate change because we believe in it.”
He said that India was yet to reach a peak level of emissions and said: “If you see the time lag between peaking [and] net zero for many countries, clearly ours is possibly among the shortest . . . our contribution should not be minimised, it should be seen in the right context. Despite our preoccupations, we have talked of a net zero commitment.”
Shringla said that Modi had met Boris Johnson privately during the conference to discuss a range of matters and praised Johnson for “investing himself personally” in the fight against climate change. Shringla said that Modi had “reiterated India’s commitment to closely work with the UK on climate finance, technology innovation and adaptation including green hydrogen and renewables, and joint initiatives”.
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Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives and a renowned environmental activist, told The Times that India was deliberately setting a long-range target to emphasise that it had been exploited by richer countries in colonial times and push them into funding climate-change reductions.
“India is not very ambitious,” Nasheed said. “And so the United States and Canada and Australia and Britain can decide, ‘OK, you know, we’re going to cover for India. We’re going to cover for India.’ Because for 500 years, they’ve been ripping them apart.” He said that although the 2070 date was “very late”, he understood the rationale that more developed countries would have to help India “because you’ve had it better for a very, very long time”.
In his address Modi also said that India’s state-run railway network intended to become net zero by 2030, which would cut emissions by 60 million tonnes a year. In his talks with Johnson, he also discussed trade, economic, health, defence and security links, and other issues including Afghanistan and counterterrorism, Shringla said. Johnson, who had to cancel a visit to India in April because of the pandemic, accepted an invitation to visit as soon as possible.
