COP27: India, China To Overachieve 2030 UN Climate Targets, Report Says

With the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) underway against the backdrop of a year in which extreme weather events highlighted the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, India and China are on track to exceed their UN climate targets.

Between 2016 and 2021, renewable energy installed capacity in India increased at a 19 per cent annual rate. Its draught national electricity plan calls for an 18 GW reduction in installed coal capacity by 2030.

This year, China is expected to install a record 156 GW of wind and solar energy and sales of electric vehicles (EVs) in China are expected to double, with the possibility of reaching six million.

According to Energy Tracker Asia's (ETA) analysis, ‘COP27 Analysis: Assessing India & China's Climate Targets,’ China and India are critical players in the global fight against climate change.

They account for 2.7 billion people, nearly 20 per cent of global GDP and nearly one-third of global emissions (China 24.23 per cent and India 6.76 per cent).

What Beijing and Delhi say at the UN climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, matters. Major decisions at the COP27 will not be made without Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi's tacit approval.

According to the report, both countries are extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. According to AON, 2022 will be one of the most damaging years on record.

China has suffered extreme weather losses totalling more than USD 20 billion, while flooding has cost India more than USD 2 billion and killed nearly 2,000 people.

Both countries' workers suffer. Due to extreme heat, India's earnings fell by 5.4 per cent in 2021, while China's fell by one per cent.

According to Hozefa Merchant and Yao Zhe's analysis, both countries committed to long-term net-zero climate targets in 2021, China before 2060 and India before 2070.

However, assessing interim progress in Delhi and Beijing has been difficult. Politicians in both capitals previously followed a policy of under-commitment on international targets, owing to concerns about energy security. However, according to the report, a growing body of evidence suggests that their investments in clean energy and green technology are gaining traction. 

“Coal demand rebounded strongly in 2021 to over 5,600 million tonnes of coal equivalent as economies recovered from the pandemic and some countries, notably India and China, turned to domestically produced fuel sources in the interests of affordability and energy security,” according to the International Energy Agency's 2022 World Energy Outlook 5.

The analysis of the electricity sectors in India and China shows how renewable energy is gradually replacing fossil fuels. Renewable energy supplied 82 per cent of the increase in China's electricity demand.

At the current rate of installation, China will have met its 2030 renewables target of 1,200GW five years sooner. It is also on track to reach a plateau in emissions this decade, well ahead of the official peaking target of 2030.

At the end of FY2022, India's total installed renewable capacity was 157GW, accounting for 39 per cent of the country's total capacity of 400GW and 22 per cent of the total generation of 1,492TWh.

According to the analysis titled ‘India-China Investment Analysis in Electricity as COP27 Progresses,’ India is likely to reach a peak and then plateau in thermal power generation at some point this decade, despite strong sustained economic growth of 5-7 per cent per year.

The UN climate talks have not specifically addressed fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the primary cause of loss and damage, accounting for 86 per cent of CO2 emissions over the last decade.

However, the world is on track to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels required to meet a 1.5-degree Celsius target.

The fossil fuel industry profits handsomely from this addiction, while households struggle to meet basic needs and over one billion people live with little or no modern energy. Africa alone has 600 million people who do not have access to electricity.

Civil society is urging governments to collaborate in addressing fossil fuel production because a COP that fails to address fossil fuel production is a COP that fails to address the root cause of the climate crisis.

Because the Paris Agreement makes no mention of coal, oil, or gas, there has been significant momentum in recent months for a complementary international mechanism, such as a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“Our host government has said that this is a COP of implementation,” said Alex Rafalowicz, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, assessing the initial announcements made by governments in their high-level statements in the opening days of COP27.