The suggestion came up during the meeting of the full Planning Commission here on Tuesday. “The modalities of the meeting — like date and place — will be worked out by the Planning Commission,” Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State (Independent charge) for Environment and Forests, told reporters here on Wednesday. He said efforts would be made to hold the meeting before the crucial Copenhagen negotiations in December.

Reiterates commitment

Reiterating that India was committed to preventing climate change, Mr. Ramesh said all legislative measures, if required, would be taken to control green house gas emissions. He said one such initiative would be to amend the Energy Conservation Act in the Winter session of Parliament and to introduce under the National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency the “Perform, Achieve and Trade” (PAT) mechanism which would assign energy efficiency improvement targets to the country’s most energy-intensive industrial units, with the provision of allowing them to retain any energy efficiency improvements in excess of their target in the form of Energy Savings Certificates (ESCerts). Units will also be allowed to use purchased ESCerts to meet their targets.

Study results released

Earlier, Planning Commission’s Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, released the results of five independent India-specific studies on GHG emissions profile which suggested that India’s per capita emissions in 2031 would be well below global average in 2005.

In fact, the report estimated that India’s GHG would be between 2.77 tonnes and 5.00 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent). The estimates are based on five different modules studied in the report.

While four of the studies estimated that even in 2031, India’s per capita GHG emissions would stay under 4 tonnes of CO2e which was lower than the global per capita emission of 4.22 tonnes of CO2e in 2005. This would mean that even two decades from now, India’s per capita GHG emissions would be well below the global average of 25 years earlier.