John Kerry Praises India For Continuing To Increase Emissions

By Paul Homewood

https://asianlite.com/2022/usa/kerry-calls-out-countries-not-adopting-science/

In his speech, John Kerry states:

“Commending the ambitious goals of 500 GW renewables by 2030 set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Glasgow (where the annual climate change summit was held in November 2021), Kerry said: “The criticality of achieving that goal was very simple. It is the only way that India itself becomes compliant with the 1.5 degrees goal, which we all ratified in Glasgow recently.”

It sounds a lot, but what impact would that 500 GW have, bearing in mind renewable capacity already stands at 152 GW?

Currently fossil fuels account for 1125 TWh a year, of which coal makes up 1125 TWh. No hydro renewables provide 10% of India’s power.

According to the IEA, demand for electricity in India is expected to rise by 5% a year through to 2040, bringing total generation up to about 2300 TWh. If the country achieves its 500 GW target, the mix will therefore look like this:

While the renewables share increases to 25%, similar to the current UK position, fossil fuel generation will still need to rise significantly, from 1125 to 1502 TWh. It is little surprise then that India is still building lots of coal power plants.

If we extrapolate forward to 2040, there are various scenarios in play, according to the IEA, but electricity demand will probably be in the region of 4000 TWh. They also reckon that wind and solar capacity will have grown from 450 GW to 941 GW during the 2030s.

https://www.iea.org/reports/india-energy-outlook-2021

Plugging these numbers in, we find that although renewables contribute 31%, fossil fuels generation is more than double today’s.

I’m not really sure how John Kerry equates with his 1.5C target, which he himself defines as a cut of emissions by 45 per cent in the course of this next eight year period,”

The reality is actually much starker, as we have only looked at the power sector. Demand for energy for industry and transport will continue to be mainly met by fossil fuels.

Even in the power sector, emissions will continue to rise till 2040, probably in the region of 20%. (Bear in mind, this is the Stated Policies Scenario, which already builds in most of Modi’s pledges at COP26).

But growth in industry and transport will likely add an extra 1300 MT CO2 to emissions.