India is set to exceed its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting the share of non-fossil fuels in electricity generation but any further commitment to reducing its carbon footprint will depend on climate finance from rich countries, a senior official said.

As part of its pledge under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, India, the world’s third-biggest carbon emitter after China and the US, is supposed to reduce its carbon footprint by 33-35 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. Also, India aims to produce 40 per cent of its power from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.

“We will achieve these goals before 2030, or in other words,by 2030, these goals will be overachieved,” Rameshwar Prasad Gupta, the most senior civil servant at the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, told Reuters in an interview.

“From 2005 levels, India’s carbon emissions fell 24 per cent by 2016- in the space of 11 years. Between 2016 and 2030 — in a span of 14 years — we’ve to reduce emissions by just 9-11 per cent, but it will be definitely much more than that,” he said.

In all probability, by 2025, non-fossil fuel sources would account for 40 per cent of the country’s power generation, Gupta said.

But any further commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions would depend on the fulfilment of the pledge that rich countries provide $100 billion a year in funding to help developing nations tackle climate change.

“Our position is tied with something concrete - somethingvery concrete - on climate finance. Climate finance fromdeveloped countries to developing countries is an integral partof the whole framework,” Gupta said.

He said developed economies, unlike India, have used “thecarbon space disproportionately”, and that was why they neededto be carbon neutral, but as a developing nation India could notbind itself to a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions goal.

Ahead of a global climate conference in Scotland in November, Britain’s COP26 President Alok Sharma held meetingswith government officials and ministers in New Delhi earlier this week.

comment COMMENT NOW