Climate Change in India: The Prime Minister’s Challenge to Modi’s Plan for the Bhadla Solar Park and the Most Polluted Cities
The temperature in the India’s Thar Desert is 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit). Even when they drop, hot winds sweep across the bare plains. The soil here is infertile, water is scarce. It is ideal for a solar farm because it is near unlivable for humans.
A sign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the Bhadla Solar Park, located near India’s border with Pakistan, which he wants to transform into a green energy powerhouse. Modi wants at least half of India’s energy to come from renewable sources.
If it does not, India’s greenhouse gas emissions are set to increase by 2030. which will make global targets even harder to reach.
India has had “a sustained increase in renewable energy installation,” Nandini Das, an energy research and policy analyst at the research institute Climate Analytics, told CNN. “Even during Covid it hasn’t stopped.”
India led a last-minute objection to language in a proposed joint statement around phasing out coal at the COP26 negotiations. He asked how else could poor people in India get gas to cook their meals if government subsidies for fossil fuels weren’t going to continue.
Just 400 miles from the Bhadla Solar Park sit four of the world’s five most polluted cities, according to the 2021 World Air Quality Report. They are covered in grey soot and ash on any given day.
It is not known if climate change is a problem for India alone. The picture changes dramatically when the emissions are seen by a large population. Per capita figures show that Indian people actually contribute relatively very little to the problem. While the average American emits 14.7 tons of CO2 a year, an Indian person emits around 1.8.
His colleague Kunal Sharma, 28, worries about what life could look like in coming years. Life after 10 years will become extremely difficult if no action is taken. “What can we do? We must live here.
The Modi government has been encouraging Indians to live more sustainable, such as by instructing drivers to turn off their engines at red traffic lights and urging people to take stairs instead of a lift.
The issue isn’t just whether the world can rely on the Indian public to reduce carbon emissions, it’s also whether the government can do the same.
A report by S&P Global earlier this year said India may not meet its 2022 target, partly because the country still lacks a clear commitment to phasing out coal.
The developed world was supposed to provide $100 billion per year to developing nations to help them deal with the climate crisis. The goal has never been met.
It could be used by India. To achieve just its wind and solar targets for 2030 would cost $223 billion, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. A report says that India needs to raise 25% of the funds annually to get to its initial climate goals.
The finance minister said that the government is working to decarbonize many industries during the annual budget presentation. It committed 19.7 billion rupee to make India a global hub of production and an exporter of green hydrogen that is produced using renewable energy to break up water into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be used as fuel by other carbon-intensive industries, such as cement and steel production.
The country needs to increase its energy storage capacity in order to take advantage of otherrenewable energy such as solar and wind, which are not available all the time.