India's Carbon Footprint in top 5

Tip of the foot !

India's greenhouse gas emissions grew more than half between 1994 and 2007, helped up by a largely coal-reliant power sector that nearly doubled its share in emissions, making the country one of the top five carbon polluters in the world. 


About 54% of country's power generation is met through coal and the trend is not showing any signs of waning away with Ultra Mega Power Plants (4000 MW each) being planned in various parts of the country based on coal. This despite the fact that India is increasingly reliant on imported coal from Australia and Indonesia. Are coal washeries an answer and an opportunity to invest? 


India has a renewable purchase obligation (RPO) and renewable energy certificates(REC) mechanism already in place. It is expected that the REC market in India will easily overshadow that CDM market which has not been taking off. But a stronger lobby of coal based producers poses risks for this fledgling market. Argulably, in US the coal lobby did not allow the RPO mechanism to take off and US did not sign the Kyoto Protocol even when the rest of the world did.