Does India’s New PM Get Climate Change?

One reason I like John Oliver is because he widens his view to include world events not usually covered in Western media, as the report above shows. India has a new leader – and this is important.

Much of the talk about fossil fuel use in the developing world centers on China – but India is going to be important in shaping earth’s atmosphere in the coming century. Recent developments paint a bit of a muddied picture.

Guardian:

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, reportedly will be a no-show at the United Nations climate summit this month. Could it be because he does not accept the science behind climate change?

Modi used to be a supporter for climate action. But in public remarks on two occasions in the last week, the leader of one of the fastest growing – and biggest emitting – economies appeared to express doubt about whether climate change was even occurring.

“Climate has not changed. We have changed. Our habits have changed. Our habits have got spoiled. Due to that, we have destroyed our entire environment,” the rightwing leader told students in a video Q&A,according to India Today on Friday.

Modi was also vague on global warming and its causes in an interview with The Hindu a few days earlier.

“Climate change? Is this terminology correct? The reality is this that in our family, some people are old … They say this time the weather is colder. And, people’s ability to bear cold becomes less,” he said.

“We should also ask is this climate change or have we changed. We have battled against nature. That is why we should live with nature rather than battle it,” he said.

Both sets of comments are at variance with Modi’s earlier views on climate change, set out in an e-book, published in 2011 when he was chief minister of Gujarat.

The e-book, called Convenient Action in an apparent tribute to Al Gore, frames action on climate change as a moral duty.

“Climate change is definitely affecting the future generations which, as of now, have no voice on the actions of present generation,” Modi wrote.

As Gujarat’s chief minister, he oversaw the final phases of construction of the hugely controversial Narmada dam. But he goes to great length in the e-book to promote his actions on climate change, expanding the use of solar and wind power, and switching to natural gas as fuel for vehicles.

In the book, Modi also took a swipe at climate deniers. “I remember, a few years ago, I used to read on lot of sceptic views of climate change, whether or not it was actually happening. Having been in public life, I am aware of behind-the-scene lobbying by vested interests that normally accompany any such carefully orchestrated campaigns.”

Earlier news reports suggest Modi has been a supporter of renewable energy, so there is a bit of a mixed message.

RenewEconomy:

The newly elected India government of Narendra Modi has announced a suite of initiatives for solar energy across the country that will be partly funded by a doubling of the tax on coal.

Modi – a long time supporter of solar – has promised a “saffron” revolution that will include ambitious targets for small, large and off-grid solar and a switch away from an assumed reliance on coal as the country seeks to deliver on its momentous task of bringing electricity to the entire country.

In its first budget announced this week, Modi’s government announced funding for a series of “ultra mega” solar PV farms to be located in four Indian deserts, in Rajasthan,  Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

The government also launched a scheme for 100,000 solar power driven agricultural pump sets and water pumping stations in off grid areas.

It has also announced plans to dramatically extend a plan to cover canals with a series of 1MW solar farms, using availabl space to generate electricity and to reduce evaporation.

And it has also announced tax cuts and excise exemptions for arrange of solar components and machinery to help reduce the cost of domestic manufacturing of solar PV cells and modules.

This is considered crucial if the government is going to meet the ambitious 20,000MW of solar by 2022 under the previous government’s National Solar Mission program.

But Modi wants to expand this dramatically – some suggest 10-fold, but perhaps not in the same time frame – and has promised at least a solar light in every household by 2020 as part of his “saffron revolution”. India currently has some 300 million people – nearly the population of the US – without power.

Deutsche Bank says the country currently has 2.6GW of solar capacity – much of it in Modi’s home state of Gujarat – and it expects installations to be around 1.5GW in 2014 and around 2GW in 2015.

However, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in a report last week that India could install more than 200GW of solar out to 2030 – nearly as much as coal-fired generation – because utility scale solar will be cheaper than new coal plants in India by 2020. The country is also expected to reach “socket parity” for residential solar before 2020.

Meanwhile, the $250 million budgeted for these measures in the 2014/15 financial year will be financed by a doubling in the tax on coal to 100 rupess ($1.70) a tonne. The tax, introduced in the 2010 budget, collected about 25 billion rupees in its first year.