PM Narendra Modi to meet climate experts' council before US President Barack Obama's visit

This will be the first formal meeting of Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change since it was reconstituted in early November 2014.

By Urmi Goswami, ET Bureau | Updated: Jan 15, 2015, 04.29 AM IST

PM Narendra Modi to meet climate experts' council before US President Barack Obama's visit

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to hold a meeting with his climate experts’ council on January 19 ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit to India.

This will be the first formal meeting of Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change since it was reconstituted in early November 2014. The council is expected to assess domestic measures being taken, planned and proposed to address climate change, including efforts to avoid increase in emissions that is reducing amount of carbon produced per dollar of GDP and measures to adapt to climate change.

Discussions of the panel, which will focus on areas in whichIndiacouldpartnerwith the US to deal with climate change, will form the basis of discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama.

Obama is expected to work out an agreement on climate change with Prime Minister Modi that will help India address its development goals in a manner that doesn’t dramatically increase the amount of carbon that India will produce. The two sides are expected to focus on renewable energy, particularly solar energy, in which India has announced the ambitious plan of adding 100GW of capacity by 2022.

Clean energy technology and other climate friendly technologies are an area of interest for India. Another area for probable concrete partnerships is improving rural electrification and access to energy in unserved areas.

The US is mindful of India’s development priorities, which preclude it from eschewing the more expensive energy sourced from renewable sources over less expensive fossil-fuel based power.

India is the world’s largest producer of biomass energy, third-largest solar and fourth largest wind energy producer. The Modi-Obama agreement on climate change is expected to focus on a funding and technology transfer framework that will help India augment its renewable energy portfolio and improve rural electrification.

The proposed climate agreement will facilitate investmentin renewable energy. Already US-based solar companies such as Sun Edison have announced plans for investing in both solar power producing plants and solar manufacturing facilities.

The Modi-Obama agreement is expected to facilitate more such investments. Energy efficiency is an important part of the US efforts to address climate change. India already has an aggressive energy efficiency programme. The two leaders are expected to increase joint efforts in this area, particularly on green buildings and fuel efficiency. B

esides focusing on clean energy technologies,Modi and Obama are also expected to chalk out partnerships on technologies related to clean coal, such as carboncaptureandstorage.

Officials indicated there could be discussions on fracking, with which the US has had success. Another area where the existing partnership between the two will be addressed relates to the phasing out of refrigerant gases like hydro fluro carbons (HFCs) and the use of climate friendly options with low globalwarming potential.

India, the fourth largest emitter country, is crucial to ensuring a new global compacton climate change is inked in Parisat the end of theyear. While the agreement between India and the US will not be on the scale of the US-China climate agreement, the US hopes that it will help India reduce the rate at which its carbon emissions rise as it develops.

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What to expect from US president Barack Obama's visit

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Washington wants forward movement on Nuclear Liability Law that would enable GE and Westinghouse to enter Indian market and make the civil nuclear deal of 2008 operational.

India too is keen to break the logjam and is working on a model that will have a pool of insurance companies giving guarantees to reactor suppliers besides diluting the provision in the law that makes the supplier liable in case of an accident.

A similar arrangement was also reached with the Russian side whose nuclear fi rms are, however, state-run. GoI thinks such an arrangement will also encourage Indian private players to get into manufacturing reactors