With Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaring at New York last week that India would be aiming to increase its renewable energy target to 450 GW (gigawatts), a senior official in the Union Environment Ministry said that there was not yet a deadline for when this target would be achieved.
On September 22, Mr. Modi said at the Climate Action Summit in New York: “In India, we are going to increase the share of non-fossil fuels to 175 GW in 2022, and to further increase it to 450 GW.”
“There isn’t a fixed year for this [increase of share of non-fossil fuels to 450 GW],” C.K. Mishra, Secretary, Union Environment Ministry, confirmed to The Hindu , in response to a query on by when this would be implemented.
India’s plan for installing 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022 was first announced in 2015 during then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Budget speech. Of this, 100 GW was to be from solar power, and so far about 80 GW has been installed.
On single-use plastic
Mr. Mishra also reiterated that there would be no ban on single-use plastic from October 2, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, but advisories have been sent out to the States to restrict the use of this class of plastics.
“The States have been told which objects constitute single-use plastic and [States] have been asked to commit to eliminating their use. Several States already have rules in place to restrict their use,” he said on the sidelines of a workshop of a sub-committee, called Working Group 3, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in New Delhi.
The IPCC is in the midst of preparing the Sixth Assessment Report, which periodically synthesises the available knowledge on climate change and the effects of global warming on different ecologies and countries. More than 200 experts from 65 countries — 12 are from India — are to start preparing a first draft of the report, which is due to be finalised late 2021. Jim Skea, Co-Chair of Working Group 3, highlighting the role of the Sixth Assessment Report, said: “Building on previous Working Group 3 assessments, this report will emphasise what can be done in the near-term to mitigate climate change, and how mitigation actions can be enabled through policy, institution-building and finance.”
