Funding, technology transfer the priorities as President-elect Biden pledges climate action

NEW DELHI: US President-elect Joe Biden giving high priority to climate change action and the stage being set for the US to return to the Paris Climate Accord could have a huge significance for developing nations like India and the larger global effort to cut down emissions.

It is expected that the Biden presidency's commitment to the climate cause will give a renewed push to the Paris Accord commitments, end policy-level confusions and give a fresh lease of life to the Obama era Indo-US agreement on enhancing cooperation on energy security, clean energy and climate change inked in 2016.

Policy papers on India released by the Biden election campaign have indicated that stronger Indo-US ties on climate and health besides bilateral trade are high priority areas for the new dispensation.


Top officials who have negotiated India's journey into the Paris Accord told ET that the Biden presidency would ensure more commitment from the developed world to the cause.

"This could certainly work favourably for India as the policy confusion that arose in the US industry on the issue under the Trump presidency will finally be laid to rest. There should be smoother technology transfer now on clean energy which we very much need. The funding question should be more clearly addressed now," the official told ET.

A lot of climate talk between India and the US will, in fact, now hinge on the crucial funding question.

India has announced ambitious targets under the Paris deal but repeatedly been pointing to the need for extra funding and subsidised access to superior western technology to cut down emissions.

Indian concerns
While over 300 thermal power plants in India need to switch to the Flue Gas De-sulfurisation (FGD) systems to cut down emissions, the cost is prohibitive. It roughly costs '50-60 lakh per mega watt to switch to FGD alone.

Union Environment minister Prakash Javadekar pointed to these challenges at the India CEO Forum on Climate Change last week.

"India's emission share in the world is only 6%. India is taking care of nature and doing well. We have increased our tree cover, converted vehicles to BS VI standards, reduced our emissions, prepared land restoration plan. I am demanding the world that technology should be made available to us at an affordable cost. I have always appealed that advanced countries which have innovative technology should not profit from a disaster," he said in his key note address.

Even amid negotiations on the Paris climate deal, India and China-led developing nations are asking the developed western world to help build a robust clean energy corpus to enable other nations to switch to cleaner fuel and machines more easily. So far, the developed nations have not walked the talk on both areas.

"It is too early to say which way the US will lean as it has formally walked out of the Paris Accord and its return to the fold will take some time. However, informal discussions with them are likely anyway. Our climate targets are clearly laid out and so is our position on further emission cuts, keeping in mind our growth needs," a senior Union environment ministry official told ET.

Incidentally, the previous Democrat dispensation under Obama had pushed India to ink the Montreal Protocol on the 'phase down' of hydroflurocarbon (HFC) emissions. The Protocol was inked after a lot of negotiations -- driven by the US -- when it was agreed that additional expenditure for the technology switch would be funded to a significant amount. It is expected that the funding issue will come again to the fore as and when the US joins the high table on climate negotiations and lends its weight to the cause.