Cheap renewable energy ignites hope of a climate deal: ADB Vice-President

Cheaper renewable energy is making it easier for the world leaders to agree to a deal on climate change, according to Bindu N Lohani, Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Lohani, who was in New Delhi recently, told BusinessLine that when the world leaders were getting together to deliberate on the Kyoto Protocol in the early 1990s, the attitude was ‘no way’. “Nobody will agree to targets, no one will commit to anything then…now, this has changed,” he said.

“I think, these negotiations (deal for emission cuts across the globe under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) are going very positively… one of the reasons for this change, I think, is because of the renewables opportunity — the renewables prices coming down,” Lohani added.

ADB, which has invested in a number of renewable energy projects, is keenly watching the international negotiations on climate change. Of its $15-billion agenda, a fifth goes towards renewable energy projects, Lohani said. “These negotiations are extremely useful benchmarks for us to do our business. For example, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed we created our clean energy programmes, established carbon funds. This time around one thing everybody knows, with or without negotiations, is that renewable energy is important,” he added.

While the bank earmarks a significant amount of funds towards clean energy, its investments in coal projects, at a time when debate on the downfall of coal energy is gaining momentum, have led to controversy.

Clearing the air, Lohani says ADB invests in coal plants where such projects could have a “transformational” effect. “For example, the last one (coal-fired plant that ADB funded) was in Pakistan. Pakistan did not have any super-critical plants and they were proposing a sub-critical one. We said no. We want to make transformational change, you move into super-critical, which is better technology, emits less carbon-dioxide,” Lohani said.

It would be a good move for India too — to transform the sub-critical coal plants into super-critical — thus cutting down on emissions and making ‘cleaner’, if not completely green, energy, he added.

“In our exercise, whenever we do coal we have to see what will happen, what emission comes in, what is acceptable according to international standards. We don't do it if all of those norms are not met for public health purposes, air pollution, water pollution,” Lohani said.

COMMENT NOW