India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced the launch of a joint climate and clean energy initiative with the United States to “mobilise investments, demonstrate clean technologies and enable green collaborations” in India that could also “create templates of sustainable development” for other developing countries.
PM Modi, speaking at the Leaders Summit on Climate convened by US President Joe Biden on Thursday, underlined that India was already doing its part and that the country’s per capita carbon emissions are 60% lower than the global average.
“We in India are doing our part. Our ambitious renewable energy target of 450 GW by 2030 shows our commitment. Despite our development challenges, we have taken many bold steps on clean energy, energy efficiency, afforestation and biodiversity. We are among few countries whose NDCs (nationally determined contribution, under the Paris climate deal) are 2 degree C compatible,” PM Modi said in an address to over 40 other world leaders who participated in the two-day summit called by Biden.
“President Biden and I are launching the India-US Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 partnership. We will help mobilise investment, demonstrate clean technologies and enable green collaborations,” Modi added.
President Biden opened the summit with an ambitious pledge to cut the US’s greenhouse gases in half by the year 2030 and called upon other nations to “set higher climate ambitions” that will create jobs at home, advance innovative technologies and help countries vulnerable to the impact of climate change”.
Biden’s new U.S. commitment, timed to the summit, would cut America’s fossil fuel emissions as much as 52% by 2030. It comes after four years of international withdrawal from the issue under President Donald Trump, who mocked the science of climate change and pulled the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord.
At the summit, Japan announced its own new 46% emissions reduction target and South Korea said it would stop public financing of new coal-fired power plants, potentially an important step toward persuading China and other coal-reliant nations to curb building and funding of new ones as well.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, one of the leaders shown watching summit proceedings in the coronavirus pandemic’s familiar Brady Bunch-style multibox conference screen, said his nation would up its fossil fuel pollution cuts from 30% to at least 40%.
China’s President Xi said that China would work with America in cutting emissions. “To protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to boost the environment is to boost productivity. It’s as simple as that,” Xi said.
Russian President Putin said that Russia is genuinely interested in galvanizing international cooperation so as to look further for effective solutions to climate change as well as to all other vital challenges. Russia by some measures is the world’s fourth-biggest emitter of climate-damaging fossil fuel fumes.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that UK is ending support for fossil fuels overseas and doubling it’s international climate financing because of the obligations for developed countries to do more. “We’re legislating to deliver 78% of the reductions needed to reach that goal by 2035”, he said. He reminded that the UK has been able to cut its CO2 emissions by about 42% on 1990 levels and yet see the economy grow by 73%.
Dhruv Ashok 
Shobhil Shrivastava 
Satish Chogule