Economic Survey: India gears up to resolve climate challenges, drive development

The Economic Survey, which was presented in Parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today lauded efforts by the government to tackle climate change issues including the roadmap ahead. “The year 2015 is going to witness new agreements on climate change and sustainable development. India has been following action-oriented policies to bring rapid development to its people while purposefully addressing climate change,” a release from the Ministry of Finance said citing the Economic Survey.[caption id=“attachment_1965873” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Fighting climate challenge. [/caption] According to the Economic Survey, India has been one of the foremost advocates of long-term global cooperation in combating climate change as per the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Programmes like National Action Plan on Climate Change way back in 2008 and revisiting national missions in the light of new scientific information and technological advances reflect the government’s intent. The Survey said that India’s total renewable power installed capacity as 31 December 2014 has reached 33.8 GegaWatts(GW) with wind energy accounting for 66 percent of the installed capacity followed by biomass, small hydro power and solar power. “India’s National solar Mission is being scaled up five-fold to 1,00,000 megawatts by 2022. In the next five years proposals are likely to generate business opportunities of the order of 160 billion US Dollars in the renewable energy sector. It offers very good opportunity for businesses to set and scale up industry, leapfrog technologies and create volumes,” the release said. Some of the country’s major immediate plans on renewable energy include scaling up cumulative installed capacity to 170 gegawatts (GW) and establishing a National University for Renewable Energy, it said. “India introduced the clean energy cess on coal in 2010 which very few countries have in the world. This has been doubled to Rs 100 per tonne in 2014. The total collection so far under the National Clean Energy Fund NCEF has crossed Rs 17,000 crores and till September, 2014, 46 clean energy projects worth Rs 16,511.43 crores have been recommended for funding out of this fund,” the release said. The country has also set up a National Adaptation Fund with an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore in 2014 to support adaptation actions to combat the challenges of climate change in sectors like agriculture, water and forestry. The Economic Survey focussed on sustainable development goals for India saying that the challenges for India are manifold. “India is at the threshold of an urban flare-up. With more than a billion population, India has to address the problems associated with increasing urbanization, tackle the problem of eradicating poverty, providing energy access to all and address other developmental priorities. It says that hidden in these challenges are great opportunities. Unlike many countries, India has a young population and therefore can reap the fruits of demographic dividend,” the report said.