Climate change: Govt on a sticky wicket

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Climate change: Govt on a sticky wicket

Nitin Sethi | TNN

New Delhi: India may have made a political commitment to reduce its emissions below the 'business-as-usual' (BAU) scenario but it has become difficult for the government to define what 'business-as-usual' really is.
A meeting held at the environment ministry with all the experts working in the field was only able to conclude that it is not possible to define 'business-as-usual' for developing countries like India.
In order to expand the discussions on an issue that is bound to be central to climate change negotiations, the government has decided to compile and share the results of all the studies by August.
Experts from The Energy Resource Institiute (TERI), NCAER, Mckinsey and Company, World Bank and IRADE attended the meeting.
All these institutions have been, in their private capacity or backed by funds from the government, carrying out detailed economic modelling to measure what volume of emissions India would emit in future.
The economic models are used to project changes in various sectors of the economy in the years to come and based on the level of fuel consumption the future economy would need, are then utilised to estimate the total future greenhouse gas emissions.
Sources said it became evident during the presentations that the assumptions made and consequently the results varied substantially in the projections.
The group of officials and experts have accepted that it had been extremely difficult to understand how changes in quantum and direction of investments and technological inputs in a developing economy such as india and China could alter the scenarios.