Green technologies need to be developed on a war-footing: Jaitley

Asserting that India is prepared to play its part in combating the danger posed by climate change, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said the global community needs to develop greener technologies “on a war-footing’’.

“India is prepared to do its part towards solving this common problem,” Jaitley said in his intervention on Climate Change Finance Ministerial organised by the World Bank on the sidelines of annual Spring Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“We have a large stake in this not least because we recognise that a significantly warmer planet will disproportionately affect poorer parts of the world, including India,” he said.

“We are also acutely aware that rich countries can more easily and affordably adapt to climate change than us, hence our large stake in mitigation,” he said.

Jaitley said the challenge of climate change can be posed simply as reconciling the energy needs of poorer countries with the common global objective of restricting emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG).

The former will require that India and similar countries are provided adequate carbon space, he said. But as on a realistic growth and technology assumptions, coal will remain the most important source of energy for India and many other energy deficient countries, he added.

“Unless coal can be greened and cleaned, it may not possible to reconcile development and climate change goals.

The international community needs to therefore go on a war-footing to generate greener technologies especially technologies that can help green coal,” Jaitley said.

Jaitley said in petroleum, India has moved from subsidising carbon to taxing carbon at levels well above the norm of $25 per tonne of CO2.

In cooking gas, India has deregulated prices and is using direct benefit transfers to further reduce inefficiencies, he said.

India, Jaitley said, has increased the levy on coal and is using the proceeds to finance clean projects.

Highlighting that the Indian Government has also embarked on an ambitious programme of promoting non-renewable energy, he said the target for generation of energy from solar sources in the year 2022 has been enhanced from 20GW to 100GW.

“We are investing in railways so that lower carbon modes of transport are preferred for freight. We are promoting the use of solar pumps in agriculture and solar lamps for poorer households,” Jaitley said.

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