The Paris Finance Summit – Money’s worth or pocket change?

The updated pledge reveals insights into India’s approach: one of caution and a preference to ensure over-compliance rather than under-compliance of international targets.

Besides pointing to a climate conservative judicial role, this judgment is a grim reminder of the fact that the efficacy of climate action is determined by far more than the climate ambition of the Executive, but remains contingent on the interplay of different organs of the State.

Banking of energy is a short-term alternative to promote renewable energy generation. While the Electricity (Promoting Renewable Energy Through Green Energy Open Access) Rules, 2022 recognise the importance of energy banking, they fail to provide a coherent framework for it.

ETS is gaining traction as a market-based instrument to reduce industrial emissions. However, questions around transparency, reproducibility, state capacity, and policy design and clarity threaten the viability of this approach in the Indian context.

The recent Working Group 1 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that particulate matter (PM or simply, fine particles) have ‘masked’ the impact of greenhouse gas emissions generated over the last century by about a third. If air pollution mitigation ‘worsens’ global warming, must we rethink pollution controls at all? Not quite.

The IPCC report indicates that the climate crisis will disrupt India’s developmental future, and undercut the prosperity of its people in the long run.

In addition to targets and policies, India needs to deepen and enhance systems of governance for the climate crisis, which include dedicated organisations, policy frameworks, capacities, and financing mechanisms. In a new policy brief, we lay out an institutional architecture capable of crafting such low-carbon development pathways.

Cooling will likely be at the forefront of India’s adaptation to climate change, but if cooling needs are met with inefficient ACs, it could be the bane of India’s mitigation efforts. Indian homes will be an important site where this conundrum between cooling needs and potential emissions will play out.

The government has taken an important step in prioritising agriculture in the electricity transition. Using the transition as a catalyst for agricultural transformation can address recurring redistributive pressures in electricity, minimise the causes and effects of climate change in agriculture, and secure a resilient rural economy and livelihoods.

Given the imminent and unavoidable transition away from coal and its likely economic and political consequences, this collective statement by 22 energy experts calls for the government to initiate a deliberative planning process with the participation of concerned interest groups and communities, and based on rigorous and context-specific analysis of economic, social, political and environmental costs and opportunities.

India's nationwide, year-round air quality crisis requires a radical rethink. But how does parliamentary discourse frame this issue? How should India approach its air quality standards in light of the WHO making its global guidelines more stringent? What would "taking the long view" on air pollution strategy look like?

Highlights of the webinar discussion held on April 13, 2021 as part of the India Energy Transition Dialogues – a series convened by the Centre for Policy Research to explore different paths to meet India’s 21st century energy goals.

‘Let us say that circumstance tossed me on the shores of environmental studies and then, just so, swept me from it. To answer why I have decided now to seek a career in environmental policy, it seems I must first explain what drove me away.’

The India Energy Transition Dialogues, a series of curated bi-weekly webinars beginning April 13, will explore different but complementary pathways to meet India’s 21st century energy goals.

India's urbanising middle class is at the brink of an unprecedented increase in residential cooling demand, yet little is understood about the dynamics of changing cooling consumption. New research by Centre for Policy Research and University of Oxford answers a set of fundamental questions around India's cooling transition.

In a recent contribution to MIT Technology Review, Dubash highlights the role of institutions in our collective response to climate change.

In a recently edited volume entitled Comparative Climate Change Litigation: Beyond the Usual Suspects, Shibani Ghosh authors a chapter where she reviews the potential hooks in the legal and regulatory framework for climate litigation in India.

The report analyses government-led responses to the pandemic within the electricity sector, and suggests a structural approach to building a resilient electricity future.