India has to be ready for higher environmental targets, says RK Pachauri, Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute and Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In an interview with BusinessLine, Pachauri talks about the benefits of moving aggressively towards renewable energy. Edited excerpts:

As a member of the PM’s council on Climate Change, what are your recommendations?

What I would like to see is that we adapt to the impact of climate change that is going to progressively get more serious.

Then, of course, you have impacts on agriculture, human health, water resources, and the problem of rising sea-levels. Each one of these will require adaptation strategies to see there is no major economic impact on the society. My submission would be that we need to revisit those missions since these were formulated about four years ago and find institutional means by which they get implemented.

Would you say we also need to revisit our targets?

Absolutely. If you look at the solar energy mission, the target for 2021-22 was 20,000 MW of solar capacity. This should be increased substantially, because there are huge co-benefits from doing that. This country has a serious problem of energy security and pollution at the local level. And all of that can be met by moving toward renewable energy in a big way.

At the international level, however, there is a feeling that India is trying to keep those targets low.

The fact is that if 100,000 MW solar power is in India’s interest, then we should tell the whole world that this is what we are doing.

And if some of the other targets can also be upped, say, energy efficiency, why not? Our automobile fleet is way behind in energy efficiency compared with Europe. Our Bharat standards are running far behind the Euro standards. I think we should close that gap because the technology is there.

How does that tie up with our developmental plans?

I don’t see a conflict between protecting the environment and development. Yes, for promoting industry and other activities, we can’t bring about a sudden reversal of our energy mix.

But if we want to promote energy security, we have to go along the route of decentralised forms of renewable energy production.

Since India is the third-largest emitter, what kind of radical changes are possible at the grassroot levels?

In case of mitigation, there are huge co-benefits in lower levels of pollution at the local levels and much higher levels of energy security, which, perhaps, would generate more jobs.

You have a centralised power supply system that gives you x number of jobs.

If you have a decentralised renewable energy-based strategy, then the number of jobs per unit of energy produced will be substantially higher.

Can you tell us about IPCC’s fifth assessment report?

One of the major findings we have in this report is the budget for Co2 emissions that are permissible, if we have to stick to a 2 degree Celsius limit on warming. This is an extremely powerful piece of information on the basis of which the world can see if we are doing enough to limit ourselves to this 2 degree Celsius increase or exceed it.

(This article was published on December 31, 2014)