Fight against pollution: India set to achieve Paris targets
The Paris agreement that India signed in 2015, was India’s inflexion point in its fight against pollution, almost similar to the inflexions seen in the UK post the London Smog in the 1950s or the Clean Air/Water Acts seen in the US in 1970s.
Over the next decade, India would continue to cut its diesel consumption, step-up natural gas and renewable power in the energy mix, upgrade emission and energy efficiency norms across sectors, and clean its water bodies.
What makes the push more forceful is the private sector participation with 19 large corporates already announcing plans to go carbon neutral by 2030-50.
The difference today is that we now plan to take a leap instead of eyeing incremental improvements. This is already visible in many ways: a) LPG penetration is at 97.5% vs 56% in 2015, on back of over 8 million new connections, to replace highly polluting alternative cooking fuels, b) city gas penetration is set to reach 70% of the population from less than 10% currently, c) auto norms upgrade straight from BSIV to BSVI, skipping BSV, d) aim to achieve 100% electrified rail network within three years to cut diesel use, e) plans to step-up rail freight capacity by five times to curtail freight movement by roads, f) plans to implement world’s largest renewable capacity addition programme
