Look who “signed up” to the Cabaret called the Paris Agreement?
…
India is doubling its coal use by 2020 and tripling its emissions by 2030. That’s what “going green” means.
India has ratified the weakest kind of non-reduction, just a promise it will try to “cut emissions intensity“. That big goal is to increase its carbon emissions by slightly less than the rate its population is growing at. An achievement most countries do just by being there. It’s the default condition as economies develop. Instead of reducing emissions, India is set to increase its total emissions threefold by 2030. Ratify that, eh?
Though even that pitifully weak anti-goal is not enforceable. Nearly everything in the Paris deal is optional, voluntary, and written as a should, not a shall. After ten months of delays and frivolous ambit claims like trying to get entry to the nuclear club (and access to more uranium), India has finally signed up for Paris anyway. Which is signing nothing much — all India has agreed to is to submit a new goal for itself every five years, and do a stocktake. It’s that banal.
As I’ve said before, there are so many reasons for developing countries to want to join the cast:
Figure how the Paris equation looks to China or India:
- how can we hobble competitors, get their factories, and help sell more goods?
- how can we collect more of pointless guilt payments (carbon credits etc)?
- as a bonus we like to get thanked and look like heroes. :- )
To get all three: smile at the press conference, and pander to the Global Worriers in words only. Do token efforts and turn the guilt screws on the West as appropriate.
The Paris agreement is a Grand Theater designed to convince western taxpayers to cough up more money. China and India are part of the show, putting on their best environmental faces while they do nothing green, or even less.
Remember December 2015: India is going to double coal output and the Paris climate deal won’t affect that.
India still plans to double coal output by 2020 and rely on the resource for decades afterwards, a senior official said on Monday, days after rich and poor countries agreed in Paris to curb carbon emissions that cause global warming.
India, the world’s third-largest carbon emitter, is dependent on coal for about two-thirds of its energy needs and has pledged to mine more of the fuel to power its resource-hungry economy while also promising to increase clean energy generation.
Oren Cass felt China was doing too little, and India was even worse:
India, meanwhile, managed to lower the bar even further, submitting a report with no promise of emissions ever peaking or declining and only a 33-35 percent reduction in emissions per unit of GDP over the 2005-2030 period. Given India’s recent rate of improving energy efficiency, this actually implies a slower rate of improvement over the next 15 years. In its INDC, India nevertheless estimates it will need $2.5 trillion in support to implement its unserious plan.
— Why the Paris deal is meaningless
The best analysis came from Paul Homewood:
India’s Climate Plan Will Triple Emissions By 2030
What does this all mean, when we take away the smoke and the mirrors. The following points stand out:
- No actual CO2 target has been set.
- Although the talk is of “increase the share of clean energy in its total energy mix by as much as 40%”, when you get down to the small print, as we will shortly, the commitment is only to 40% of capacity, and not generation. As we know, renewables give very poor utilisation, so the amount generated will be much, much less than 40%.
- Also, this 40% is not of its total energy mix, as reported, but only of electricity mix.
- Commitment is given about reducing carbon intensity of GDP, but nearly half of this has already been achieved since 2005. As we have seen with China, maturing economies tend to grow away from energy intensive industries.
Homewood calculates that if India sticks to its INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contribution) and cuts its emissions intensity by 19% as promised, allowing for current population growth, its emissions will still grow from 2100Mt in 2014 to 6300Mt by 2030.
Last October India were asking for $166b a year to achieve this. I wonder what they got?
Extra reading — how the US and China “ratifications” are just as meaningless: Emergency Theater for Paris Agreement: China, US rush to sham ratification.
Tell the obedient Anglosphere nations, not to pay, not to play — the Paris agreement is an act.
Big emitters would like to be seen,
By alarmists as having turned clean,
For which they don’t care,
Just to gain market share,
And profit from anything Green.
— Ruairi