India-US climate talks to focus on clean energy, tech R&D

The Economic Times , Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Correspondent : Urmi Goswami
LIMA (PERU)| NEW DELHI: India and the United States are expected to announce a joint effort to tackle climate change with focus on clean energy and technology R&D during President Barack Obama's visit to the country in January.

Though a big ticket announcement like the US-China deal last month has been ruled out, in keeping with the leadership role that the US has sought to take on in climate negotiations over the last two months, Obama is expected to persuade Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ramp up India's efforts to fight climate change.

Obama will be in the country next month as the chief guest for Republic Day parade.

"I am expecting a useful meeting but we don't have anything in the works of the kind that we were involved with in China," US envoy for climate change Todd Stern said. "We have a substantial desire to work in a constructive and ramped up way with India on climate change and clean energy," he added.

At the US climate talks in Lima the US was proactive in its engagement in the final hours when it seemed that the talks were headed for failure.

Earlier in the week, US Secretary of State John Kerry addressed the meet, asking all countries to do their part to reduce emissions to slowdown global warming.

Globally, India is the third largest emitter (fourth largest if the 29-member European Union is counted as a single entity), though the country's share of emissions is low (roughly 6%) and its per capita emissions are very low (approximately 1.8 metric tonnes) compared to the US, EU and China.

India has recently announced plans to increase its solar power generation capacity by five-fold to 100GW, and the Union cabinet has subsequently cleared some of the components of this plan.

At the same time, the country has also made it clear that it will increase its coal production and its coal-fuelled power production infrastructure — a move seen as problematic by many given global calls on the basis of severe scientific warnings to rapidly phase out the use of fossil fuels like coal.

The US-India engagement on climate change is expected to focus on scaling up of India's clean energy portfolio to reduce the use of coal.

Energy efficiency is another area where the two countries are expected to cooperate.

With the US focused on emission reduction, President Obama is expected to raise the possibility of working with India on technology in clean energy and other climate change-related technology. This could result in some headway towards setting up a global technology consortium.

India has said technology will play a key role in addressing impacts of climate change and to minimise emissions.

India was the key architect of the technology mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. New Delhi is keen that there be no licence fee for the use and transfer of climate change-related technology and that funds to pay for the licences could be provided through some kind of international climate finance mechanism.

Sources indicated that based on its assessments, the US government is not keen on such an arrangement for licencing technology.

Other areas where the two countries could expand their cooperation relate to unlocking and accessing private sector investment in energy efficiency.

Modi and Obama are also expected to take forward their discussion on a Clean Energy Finance Forum to promote investment and trade in clean energy projects.

 
SOURCE : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/india-us-climate-talks-to-focus-on-clean-energy-tech-rd/articleshow/45542384.cms
 


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