Reducing Specific emission by 25% over 15 years
The bet may or may not come off, but it is in my view a fair target.
What does 17.5% over 15 years translate to? It’s 1.08% pa. Similarly 25% over 15 years is 1.5% pa. When Jayaram Ramesh says that India’s specific emission reduced by 17.5% between 1990 and 2005 and that India will try to make it 25% in the next 15%, he is talking about shifting from 1.08% pa to 1.5% pa.
Specific emission is the ratio of absolute emission to GDP. If emission grows at the same rate as GDP, there will be no reduction specific emission. If it grows faster than GDP, specific emission will increase.
The GDP grew by an average of around 6.5% pa during the first 15 years period. We expect this average growth to be somewhere in the range of 7.5-8% pa during the next 15 years period. If the emission growth remains same as in the past (it probably grew at around 5.4% pa during the 15 year period), the specific emission will automatically start reducing 1-1.5% pa faster than before. The minister and the government is betting that even if the emission growth accelerates, the acceleration will be less than 0.5%.
The bet may or may not come off, but it is in my view a fair target. It won’t help India if emission growth accelerates at the same rate as GDP growth. It may be remembered that all this does not imply that emissions will go down. It will continue to grow.
If 25% specific emission decline over 15 years is achieved along with 7.5% pa GDP growth, it means emissions will grow at around 5.9-6% pa (faster than the earlier 15 years).
Last 5 posts by Amit Sinha
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- Reducing Specific emission by 25% over 15 years - December 4th, 2009
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Tags: emissions, environment, Jayaram Ramesh, specific emission