Nuclear power must be bigger part of the mix for India to meet emission commitments: Jairam Ramesh

'My expectation from Glasgow is that the rule book for implementing the Paris agreement should be clinched before we get into all these meaningless debates on net zero', says Ramesh

Senior Congress MP Jairam Ramesh was an influential voice at the Copenhagen and Cancun editions of the UN Climate Change Conference in 2009 and 2010. As yet another edition of the Conference of Parties (COP) gets underway in Glasgow, Ramesh spoke to DH’s Shemin Joy, charging the Narendra Modi government with diluting forest and environmental laws and rules at home while making the right noises outside India. The former Union environment minister says that nuclear power has to be a bigger part of the mix for India to be able to make emissions commitments.

World leaders have converged in Glasgow for COP26. What outcome do you expect from the summit?

I have very modest expectations. It's been six years since the Paris agreement. That was based on the foundations of (climate summits of) Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010. It took five years after Cancun to arrive at the agreement.

We are now six years after the Paris (summit), we still do not have the rule book for implementing the Paris agreement. In Glasgow, there will be a lot of rhetoric, there will be a lot of moralising, there will be a lot of grandstanding. But I don't expect any great breakthrough. Fundamental non-negotiable output of Glasgow should be the finalisation of the rule book. Countries made pledges in Paris. How are they going to hold themselves internationally accountable? It is not enough to be domestically accountable. You have to be internationally accountable. This is a global agreement. So that is still not done. It is still going round and round for six years.

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My expectation from Glasgow is that the rule book for implementing the Paris agreement should be clinched before we get into all these meaningless debates on net zero and so on, which is completely fraudulent in my view. I mean in 2050, all the people who are going to make the commitments are not going to be around to be held accountable. It is an aspirational goal to have net zero. But the question is what are you doing in the 2020s, in the 2030s? That is more important. Net Zero becomes an excuse, it is a clock for failure to do something meaningful in the 5-10-15 year horizon. Entire COP architecture in my view is fundamentally flawed.

I have been saying this ever since I was a Minister that the COP architecture is a COP-out architecture. This is COP26. Can you imagine for 26 years, we have been meeting year after year. It is like the objective of the COP25 is to figure out where to have COP26, when you have COP26, you have to figure out where to hold COP27. This is completely dysfunctional architecture. For dealing with the problem which you know have day-to-day ramifications, climate change actions should not have to be something you announce in the form of a dramatic headline during two weeks of November. It is something which is a day-to-day activity. You make commitments, you improve on the commitments, you make new commitments, increase your level of ambition. So this is an architecture where you sleep throughout the year and suddenly you wake up and then you want to make a dramatic gesture.

I think this whole thing, I am not terribly excited by it. To be meaningful, it must deliver on the Paris agreement, it must close the Paris agreement, which was signed by so many Heads of governments and heads of States. We do not have finality on how the Paris agreement pledges are going to be monitored, reported, verified, then what are we talking about.

Do you think the Modi government is walking the talk on environment, climate change?

No. The Modi government is not walking the talk on environment. It is walking the talk on the environment globally, but it is walking in a completely different direction domestically. Yes, the Modi government has taken advantage of the dramatic fall in solar prices. For example, when I took over as Environment Minister in 2009, solar prices were Rs 15 per unit. Today, it is less than Rs 3 per unit. Solar prices have fallen dramatically. India has taken advantage of it, rightly so. In terms of renewable energy, we had a target of 20,000 MW. Modi increased it to 100,000 MW.

It was inevitable because the cost was declining so dramatically. But I don't judge the Modi government by what the Prime Minister says in Glasgow. While he speaks in Glasgow, there are proposals here to amend the Forest Conservation Act. There are proposals to convert the Environment Protection Act into an Environment Management Act. There are proposals for one overarching law to bring everything under one law. These are completely ridiculous ideas. You are diluting all the coastal regulations, the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Rules. The draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations that is coming out is basically going to lead to making a mockery of the entire environment impact assessment process. You have loosened pollution norms for thermal power plants. I see Modi saying the right things but his actions are completely different.

What should be India's attitude, red-lines in Glasgow?

Modi will not go for red-lines or deadlines. He will only go for headlines. I don't go by this notion of red-lines and deadlines. Frankly, as of today, we cannot obviously announce that we are going to phase-out fossil fuels. We can certainly announce a phase-down strategy. I will give you an example. I don't see why we can't say that by 2045, which is a long enough period, India will not have any petrol or diesel vehicles. That is a doable target.

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While we cannot announce economy-wide targets, we can certainly announce some sectoral initiatives. Should we announce it in Glasgow and all, that is a separate issue. I am not talking about it. Domestic actions count more than global announcements. Whatever you announce globally, we really have to back it up domestically. Everybody recognises India's developmental challenges. Our per capita consumption of electricity is 1/8th of Europe, it is 1/15th in the US, 1/6th in China. Electricity consumption in India is bound to increase. We are not running away from it. But we cannot certainly do it in the good-old traditional manner. Today, nuclear power accounts for 3-3.4% of electricity generation. It ought to have been at least double that contribution today. So nuclear power in climate change point of view is a better option than coal.

Unfortunately what has happened in India is that the nuclear programme has not expanded at the rate at which it ought to have expanded and therefore, the pressure on coal has increased. But we must start thinking very seriously about a phase-down, not a phase-out. There is a difference between phase-down and phase-out. Now, if there is a dramatic decline in the cost of energy storage, which I think will happen, then the pressure on India to expand the coal-based power generation to provide the base load will be reduced substantially. As of now, because of the intermittency of the renewable energy, you still require base load capacity. That base load capacity comes either from gas or coal or nuclear. We have difficult choices to make but we have to be very clear about the path we are going.

The path should be a phase-down path. But we can certainly consider phase-outs in specific areas, like phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 or 2045 in India. Today, Tesla has become the sixth trillion dollar market cap company. India made some commitments at Paris. We will fulfil two of the three commitments -- those were commitments I had made in 2009 and I was criticised bitterly by BJP's late Arun Jaitley and everybody else. In 2015, the Modi government made it part of the Paris agreement. So in emission intensity, undoubtedly we will meet the target.

On the commitment of 40% of electricity coming from non-fossil fuels, I am sure we will exceed the target. But the commitment on forestry we have made is completely bogus. We said that we will expand the contribution of our forests to absorb the carbon as 'carbon sink'. That is not going to happen, particularly when you are going to destroy natural forests and if you are not going to regenerate forests. If you are going to liberalise all your forest conservation laws, which is very much on the agenda, then I am afraid we are going up completely the wrong track.

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has said that India needs to be in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to quit coal power. What is your view?

Where I disagree with Piyush Goyal is that I have always believed and I have said this in 2009 that India should have standardised on its own design of a heavy water reactor. India should not depend on imported reactors. I have a fundamental problem with that. Two standard 700 MW reactors are coming up in Kakrapar in Gujarat and more elsewhere. India should standardise on those reactors. We should build on those reactors. To think that imported reactors are going to be the answer to India's nuclear capacity problems, I have never been in agreement with this view. I have stated this in 2009 that India must standardise on its own indigenous design, upgrade it. We went from 210 MW, then we built 500 MW, then 700 MW. We can upgrade it to 1,000 MW.

Are you saying that one should not link the NSG membership with this?

No. I am just saying that we should not depend on imported reactors. After all, we signed the nuclear deal in 2005. Have we got any imported reactors? We haven't. India's nuclear strategy must be based on standardisation of its own 700 MW reactor. It cannot depend on imported reactors. Fundamental starting point of Goyal's statement is that we will depend on imported reactors. He is linking the import of reactors with the NSG. I am not talking about NSG membership. India must be a member of the NSG. That I agree. We have been trying that and we must pursue that. But I don't think imported reactors are the answer to India's nuclear problems. India's nuclear programme is at cross roads. Nuclear power accounts for 3-3.4% and we ought to have been 6%. We should by 2040 aim to have at least 10-15% of our electricity coming from nuclear power.

Another argument is about climate finance. Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav has said in Glasgow that developed nations have not adhered to their commitment. What is your response?

I agree. They have not. They made a promise of $100 billion. I think they are at about $80 billion. That is a generous figure because they have re-classified development assistance as climate finance. My view has always been -- this view I have taken when I was a Minister -- that countries like India and China are perfectly capable of raising the resources required for meeting their climate objectives. This climate finance is largely for smaller countries -- African countries, island States etc. It is also for countries like India. In fact, I negotiated India's first climate loan for Himachal Pradesh from the World Bank. It was one of the first World Bank projects on climate finance. But India's capacity to generate resources, domestically and internationally, is very strong. I don't think we should link what we do to the availability of finance. I have never been sympathetic to this view.

Has the government reached out to the Opposition before going to Glasgow?

No. Zero. In 2009, I wrote to the Lok Sabha Speaker requesting to nominate MPs for the Copenhagen summit. They were not selected by me but by the Speaker. Murli Manohar Joshi, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Suresh Prabhu among others were there in the delegation. There were four debates in Parliament before and after Copenhagen. There were two debates each before and after Cancun. There was no reach out this time.

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