COP 28 in Dubai opened last week with fiery speeches from presidents and heads of state on the need to accelerate efforts to combat climate change. Emmanuel Macron, Lula, Narendra Modi… The Indian Prime Minister, a sign of his country’s commitment, even offered to host COP 33 in 2028. “The whole world is looking at us, Mother Nature is looking to us so that we are protecting its future. We must succeed,” he pleaded. A few minutes earlier, he defended the colossal efforts of an India which would have found “a model for the world” in the balance between ecology and economy – forgetting, in passing, the regular peaks of fine particle pollution which asphyxiate the capital New Delhi. Narendra Modi insists: the 1.4 billion Indians, or “17% of the world population”, represent only “4% of emissions”.
Problem: it is based on outdated figures. According to the latest reference (and peer-reviewed) publication of the Global Carbon Project, India accounts for 8% of global emissions. And they are expected to increase by 8.2% in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to projections from this international research project. This is the largest increase in a country over one year, ahead of China (+ 4%) which remains the world’s leading emitter. Emissions from historical contributors should fall: by 3% for the United States and 7.4% for the European Union.
The latter has also been overtaken by India, which has become, since 2022, the third nation that emits the most CO2. Certainly, Indian authorities often point to the ratio of emissions per capita, where they do well. But “if development continues in this way, without a change towards carbon-free energies, we will see a very sharp increase in emissions,” warns Philippe Ciais. The researcher at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory (LSCE) also draws a parallel, in terms of trajectory, “with the development of China over the last decade”. Something to worry about.
“India cannot survive without coal”
India is often praised, and rightly so, for its dynamism in terms of installing renewable energies. But this good point barely conceals its very strong dependence on coal, which represents 73% of its electricity mix. The increase in solar and wind capacity was only able to meet “only a quarter of the growth in electricity demand” last year. analyzes the Ember think tank. It is therefore not surprising that the Global Carbon Project anticipates an increase in coal-related emissions of 9.5% by 2023 (+5.3% for oil, +5.6% for natural gas). India is not ready to do without coal and does not hesitate to make it known. At COP 28, the country said it was in favor of a tripling of renewable energies by 2030. But it refused to sign the global commitment, ratified by 116 nations, due to wording synonymous with a red line on … the coal. The document calls for “the gradual cessation of electricity production from coal”. This is a priority for many countries at the COP, including France, with Emmanuel Macron having declared “want to initiate an absolute, major and complete shift on this subject”.
“India cannot survive without coal, it has no other options”, comments in a note Rashika Gupta, Climate and Sustainable Development Analyst at S&P Global. The most populous state in the world still has plans for new coal-fired power plants in the pipeline and is one of the three largest coal producers, along with China and Indonesia, all of which generated record quantities in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Faced with such dependence, Narendra Modi set carbon neutrality at 2070, 20 years after most rich countries. However, to limit the increase in global temperature to the famous threshold of 1.5°C, the IEA estimates that India should completely decarbonize its electricity by 2040 and move towards “net zero” ten years later.
Already mistreated, this objective of the Paris Agreement seems to be moving further and further away. “There is no sign of the rapid reduction in global emissions that is necessary to combat climate change,” notes the Global Carbon Project lucidly. Worse: CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels will reach a new record in 2023 (+1.1%). If current levels persist, there is a 50/50 chance that 1.5°C of warming will be consistently exceeded in 7 years. And the 1.7°C mark in 15 years.