Dialogue on long-term cooperative action
ANANDI SHARAN
|
For ushering in a sensible global energy policy on the basis of a strict climate change mitigation regime
|
THE NAIROBI Climate meeting which ended recently again reminded us of the urgent need for India to take the global lead to usher in a sensible and equitable global energy policy on the basis of a strict climate change mitigation regime, a lead we took when negotiations for the climate change treaty first started in 1991, but which has since weakened.
We are probably the only country in the world already on our way to achieving an integrated energy policy regime based on renewables on a voluntary basis. For India 35 per cent of primary energy comes from renewables.
Industrialised countries are only just waking up to renewables. Their historic plundering of the planet leaves them least equipped to understand how to harness these most vital of energy sources in a socially benign manner.
The lesson from the last 19 months of the Kyoto Protocol and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) experience is that the Dialogue on long-term cooperative action ("daughter of Kyoto") will only be replaced by a hard-hitting international climate regime if G-77 plus China call the shots.
The cooperative actions we need to introduce are: first, setting new tougher emission reduction targets for the post 2012 commitment period for industrialised countries, and second, putting in place national sectoral rather than project-based baselines. The present limited Kyoto targets cause carbon prices to fall due to lack of demand, leaving project developers without an incentive to build renewable energy projects.
To achieve tougher targets and timetables, industrialised countries have to have targets and timetables based on negotiated equitable global per capita allocation of emissions allowances. They will then have to introduce Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) and energy efficiency through national fiscal incentives, tax measures, planning measures, policy-led tariff policies and domestic offset incentive schemes.
Secondly, the restrictive interpretation of baselines based on the Kyoto Protocol-derived assumption that a renewable energy project has to "reduce emissions over and above what would have happened in the absence of the project," means we cannot get a carbon credit for switching from less efficient renewables to more efficient renewables for example.
The existing Kyoto wording on baselines creates immense problems for project promoters who wish to supply modern renewables, for example modern RETs-based cooking solutions both for urban and rural users. To achieve this second aim of sectoral baselines, we will pick up on what the Central Electricity Authority has already started, which is to set national sectoral baselines. Grid electricity now has an official baseline.
The next sector which needs one is cooking fuel. In the absence of an international climate change mitigation regime, 60 per cent of Indians will continue to cook on traditional stoves burning wood which is not replanted at fast enough rates. The other 40 per cent use LPG and kerosene. Three tonnes of fuel wood per household a year cause 4.95 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, assuming that the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from burning this wood is not replanted and therefore is not getting reabsorbed by trees as they grow.
Today we cannot get a carbon credit to finance RETs such as compressed biogas for cooking by switching from such "non-renewable biomass." To overcome this problem, we must work to introduce an official sectoral baseline for cooking fuel in India, taking the present mix of cooking fuels into account, and submitting it as the official national baseline to the CDM Executive Board. In this way India will proactively encourage national sectoral baseline setting as a way of catching more RETs with the international carbon trading net.
(The writer, a CDM practitioner, can be contacted at anandi@bgl.vsnl.net.in)
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Open Page
