Fighting climate change with net zero: Opinion

Written By Mr. Vinay Thadani, Director, Grew Energy Private Limited

The present year events have drawn the world’s attention towards the imminent ‘climate change’ phenomenon. With the increase in instances of untimely rain, heat wave, drought, floods, hurricanes and wildfires all over the world, one needs to act immediately on curbing the effects of climate change.

The efforts to combat climate change has to be both on macro and micro level. The United Nations has made climate change a global priority by organizing COP (Conference of Parties) every year, bringing together leaders from across the world to pledge and act against the threat of climate change.

One of the factors that hinders this fight against climate change is the over dependence on coal and other fossil fuels as energy resource. Recognizing this, the Indian government has set a target to achieve net zero by 2070.

At the COP26, in Glasgow, it was stated that we are well on our way to meeting the 2030 target of 450 GW of renewable and 500 GW of non-fossil energy capacity, with the goal of having clean energy supply for half of India’s electricity need by 2030.

Consequently, India has pledged to cut 1 billion tonnes of projected emissions by 2030 and achieve a carbon intensity reduction of 45% from 2005 levels by that same year. This year National Electricity Plan (NEP) aims to achieve 57% renewable capacity by 2027 and 68% by 2032.

It also plans for a 24% increase in solar power production targets for 2027 compared to the previous plan. With such vision and ambition, we expect COP27 to aid and accelerate the growth of renewable energy.

The COP27 platform is ideal to advocate for immediate shift to renewable energy. According to data released by the energy think-tank Ember, global renewable energy generation increased by 416 terawatt hours in first six months of 2021 against 389 terawatt hours electricity demand rise, which means clean energy sources met 107% of demand.

This should encourage more and more key players to invest in renewable energy. These investments will lead to large scale development in the sector thereby creating more job opportunities.

Over and above these, subsidies on renewable energy will help in mass adoption of solar energy thereby minimizing dependence of non-renewable resources.
In this global fight against climate change, renewable energy is our greatest strength. Hence, together with the government, we must synergize our efforts and resources to make India solar energy leader.