Environmentalists keep claiming that green energy is about to take off in developing countries, but that doesn’t seem to be the case based on what China and India have planned for their energy future.
Experts say Chinese and Indian carbon reduction is critical to the goal of keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, yet neither country has made a serious commitment to the $90 trillion, green energy price tag the International Energy Agency says is required.
India is the world’s fastest growing emitter of greenhouse gases and has expressed disappointment in the draft text of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris to be held in December. The country’s climate change minister, Prakash Javadekar, has stated that he was “not at all happy” with the Conference for reasons of “equity.” India has stated it will only reduce emissions if it receives substantial assistance from Western countries, equivalent to $2.5 trillion over the next 15 years in direct aid, grants, and cheap financing.
China emits 29 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide while the US is only responsible for 15 percent of the world’s emissions according to a 2014 study by the European Union. China has only agreed to stop increasing its emissions by 2030, not to make any reductions.
The article cites Chinese plans to create a carbon emissions trading scheme similar to Cap-and-Trade. Emissions trading schemes have been criticized by numerous parties including the economists who created the concept of emissions trading and the current Executive Director of Greenpeace USA. When Europeans attempted a carbon emissions trading scheme it actually ended up increasing emissions.
China, India and other developing countries are reluctant to cut emissions because their economies are deeply dependent on cheap, carbon emitting, forms of energy. India, for example, is building 87,122 megawatts of coal power capacity.
Despite massive subsides, investment, and support from regulatory authorities wind and solar power only accounted for 3 and 1 percent respectively of all power generated in 2014.
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