India last week announced its “climate action plan” in preparation for December’s climate summit in Paris, and the featured points grabbed the world’s attention:

• 40% increase of “clean [i.e., CO2-free] energy” by 2030;
• reduced CO2 “emission intensity” by 33% from 2005 levels by 2030;
• calling for wealth countries of the West to help it meet the costs of these efforts.

That last point is the one to be taken most seriously. As for the first two, well, there’s lots of smoke and mirrors, but Paul Homewood cuts through to the meat:

• The 40% increase in “clean energy” is an increase not in “clean energy” as a total proportion of India’s energy mix but on its prior (2005) level, and it’s in capacity, not actual generation (which typically is about 1/6th to 1/3rd of capacity) by 2030, i.e., by 2030 it will still make up only about 17% of total electricity generation—-and far less of transportation energy.
• Though CO2 “emission intensity” (CO2 emitted per unit of energy generated) will fall, aggregate CO2 emissions will triple by 2030.

Figure this as one of the hundreds of complex dance steps leading up to the feverish negotiations at Paris that will likely end, as in most recent climate summits, in a panicked last day or two that yields an “agreement” whose requirements are vague and on all or most nations nonbinding—but that will certainly call for more redistribution of wealth from the West to the rest.

 

Featured Image Courtesy of  Larry Lamsa/ Flickr CC