Hello everyone, per a request, I have decided to publish my research paper I did for my online class.
Please keep in mind that this was for a class and is in no means meant to be taken in any professional way.
India is one of the world’s highest emitters of greenhouse gasses due to the number of coal plantations they have as well as lack of energy resources. During the time of the Paris Agreement in which India signed in 2016, India had 6.5 tons of GHG emissions. While that may seem low, India was the fourth-largest emitter of GHG while the rest of the world follows. India’s agreement when they signed the Paris Agreement in 2016 was to reach a target of 450 GW of renewables by 2030 and hopefully remaining under 2°C compatible which is rated by the Paris Agreement targets. While India has been reducing minor GHG emissions, for example, changing gas cars to electric cars, many Indian citizens have mentioned that there has not been many charging stations for electric vehicles which may be caused by the lack in resources they want to use as they are working on reducing the amount of energy and resources to make the electric vehicle charging stations. This makes me wonder if they abruptly lead to the change in electric cars or perhaps informed people that they were selling electric cars and why they sold and used electric cars first rather than first using producing electric charging stations? This is just one of the examples of what India has been attempting to in which there has been a lack of resources, for example, lithium which has been a struggle to obtain in India.
While energy is a big problem in India, when it comes to reducing fossil fuels, India’s coal plantations are one of the largest problems. Indian coal plantations release around 15,000 MW (megawatts) of fossil fuels which is what is holding them back to reducing GHG. At the moment, the Indian government is trying to make the coal tax more expensive and to make sure that they are using renewable energy in hopes to reduce the large numbers of fossil fuels that are going into the atmosphere. By doing so, they are able to keep within their declaration during the Paris agreement in which they signed for around 2°C and above without going below. By promoting renewable energy like solar panels, India is able to generate cleaner and safer ways to utilize energy. They are utilizing off-shore wind, solar panels, and through these renewable sources, they can increase their GW through the use of renewable energy without including any type of fossil fuels. One of the questions I have is how reliable are these renewable sources without using coal plantations which is nearby as one of the things that is stopping them is the use of coal as fuels? Is there a possibility that they will go back to using coal plantations when these renewable resources get too difficult to use?
India is one of the top emitters of greenhouse gasses around the world and it is believed that while they are indeed using renewable resources, some parts of India are not fully using renewable resources. Coal, which is something that comes up a lot because of the large amounts of plantations around India, have plans to decline its future costs of renewable electricity storage and solar energy by fostering low-carbon investments. However, by investing in these renewable power, they are also using more of its power. In 2017, India topped fossil fuels, signifying that while their intentions to reduce power were working, they were also using more fossil fuels, counteracting the use of reducing power. In 2015, they were below their goal of 2°C, not using as much fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses, however with the increase in population and need to use more energy in India, by 2019 and toward the middle of 2020, they would near their goal of being over the goal of 2°C. By reaching 2°C, this would mean that they have reached their fair share of worldwide use of global effort in order to reduce GHG. By going above their limit of 2°C, they may get risks of unsafe energy use as well as health problems for citizens and the energy systems within India.
While India may be a top contributor to the large GHG emissions around the world, they are imposing different resources that can help India maintain their agreement from the Paris Agreement. As a developing country, India does have the resources to become sustainable with small emissions of GHG and fossil fuels. With the reduction of coal plantations and the increase of solar panels, electric cars, wind farms, etc., which can always be modified for future purposes, India has gone through a slow yet tough few years since the Paris Agreement as they would have to narrow resources down in order to make sure what they are using is sustainable. While the reduction may not always go in a perfectly upward slope and sometimes there would be spikes in GHG emissions and fossil fuels from time to time, India has indeed been slowly decreasing their GHG emissions since 2016.
I hope that you enjoyed reading my research paper and that you learned something new as I did when I wrote this!
Loves,
Veronica Chen