Making India carbon neutral
Climate change is a growing concern and its damaging effects are already being witnessed across the planet today. Countries across the globe are taking strong measures to arrest this problem, and India is no different in this regard.
Greenhouse gases (GHG) like carbon dioxide have widely been accepted as one of the prime contributors to climate change, and decarbonisation on a colossal scale is the only remedy to end this issue. India has made strong commitments towards emerging as a carbon-neutral country by 2070 and has announced its strategic plan to accomplish this at the COP27 conclave held in Egypt last year.
Transitioning from highly polluting fossil fuels to cleaner, renewable sources of energy is a move that is expected to have a lasting effect on slowing climate change. India, however, produces roughly 60 per cent of its total energy requirements from coal and gas fired power plants, while the rest is met through renewable capacity. Although the green power infrastructure continues to grow in the country, for India to meet its aspiration of achieving half of its energy consumption from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, these efforts need to be accelerated.
Introduction of policies to decarbonise India: To give a boost to India’s decarbonisation efforts towards a sustainable future, the government introduced the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill 2022 earlier this year that has laid the foundation for the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) in the country. This landmark amendment has empowered the Ministry of Power to identify sectors that consume high volumes of energy (like steel refineries and power plants) and affix stipulated carbon emission targets for each of these industries.
When these entities reduce their carbon emissions, they are granted carbon credits, while those that fail to meet their targets are required to purchase certificates that are commensurate with their emissions or pay additional charges for their pollution.
The CCTS has formulated guidelines for a market that will permit the buying and selling of these carbon credits, which is expected to act as a catalyst for India’s decarbonisation efforts. By incentivising investors and players to invest in green infrastructure and carbon capture initiatives through the creation of tradable carbon credits, and disincentivising polluting industries for their excessive carbon emissions through mandatory purchasing of these certificates, the country’s decarbonisation trajectory is expected to be on track to achieve its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2070.
Carbon credits and the biomass sector: Despite the rapid rise of urbanisation and industrialisation across the country, agriculture and its allied sectors continue to be a sizeable contributor to India’s GVA, accounting for a wholesome 18.3 per cent and employing about 62 per cent of the nation’s population.
Unfortunately, the agricultural sector also contributes nearly 14.37 per cent of India’s total yearly GHG emissions, with one of the most significant reasons being the mismanagement of agricultural waste. Due to lack of awareness and better alternatives, farmers in India tend to burn agricultural waste, or dump it into landfills. If this waste can be collected efficiently and transported to biofuel production facilities, this can be transformed into briquettes and pellets which can be blended with coal to produce electricity. This creates a new carbon cycle, which can be used to generate carbon credits.
Local participation plays a pivotal role: One of the main challenges for biofuel creation is the logistics involved in collecting the biomass from its source. Raw agricultural waste is extremely voluminous, and with the scattered nature of farms in India, transportation can become a choke point for the entire value chain.
In countries like France, local municipalities have partnered with farmers to collect their waste directly from their fields and transport it to the biofuel processing centre. Closer to home, in an effort to reduce its carbon footprint, the administration in Indore has begun collecting organic waste from across the city and has been trucking it back to a central processing plant where it is converted into energy. Similarly, across rural India, Gram panchayats and local farmer co-operatives can team up to aggregate organic farm waste and transport it efficiently to the biofuel facility.
Way forward: Through grassroots involvement in setting up the biofuel value chain, right from aggregating the feedstock from the fields to transporting it to the processing centres, significant decarbonisation of the agricultural sector will occur.
Besides creating wealth from waste, the advent of the trade in carbon credits on a dynamic carbon market will facilitate further revenue generation from the creation and subsequent sale of these certificates which will percolate down to the farmers themselves. Furthermore, CCTS will attract investments that are crucial for growing the renewable infrastructure in the country.