For the first time in four decades, India has recorded a fall in CO2 emissions, says an analysis by the environmental website, Carbon Brief. Emissions dropped by around 1 percent in the fiscal year ending March 2020.
A study conducted by Lauri Myllyvirta and Sunil Dahiya of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) credits the economic slowdown coupled with renewable energy growth and the impact of Covid-19 for this year-on-year reduction.
The researchers have observed the fall has been steep during March after the national lockdown announced to combat the Covid-21 pandemic. The fall has touched 30 percent in April.
Even before the lockdown period, a falling electricity use and competition from renewables had weakened the demand for fossil fuels.
The analysis indicates a decline in emissions reflects the headwinds already affecting the Indian economy since early 2019, and increasing renewable energy generation.
The demand for coal has been weakening. Coal-fired power generation fell 15 percent in March and 31 percent in the first three weeks of April, based on daily data from the national grid. At the same time, renewable energy (RE) generation increased by 6.4 percent in March and saw a slight decrease of 1.4 percent in the first three weeks of April.
As lower power demand growth and competition from renewables weakened the demand for thermal power generation throughout the past 12 months, the drop-off in March was enough to push generation growth below zero in the fiscal year ended March, the first time this has happened in three decades, say the analysis.
The researchers say that the longer-term outlook for India’s emissions will be shaped, to a significant degree, by the government response to the crisis. This response is now starting to emerge—as set out below—and will have major long-term implications for India’s CO2 emissions and air quality trajectory.
