Infrastructure Today | October 2008

Editor’s page

Environmental moolah mantra

It needs hardly be emphasised today that global warming constitutes the biggest threat to our planet, far more than the devastation caused by all the wars waged for pelf and power. It is therefore a welcome augury that India, which thus far lay outside the weltanschauung of the Kyoto Protocol, and which today is counted as the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, should unveil its first climate change initiative dubbed the National Action Plan on Climate Change. The new policy does not commit India to green house emission reduction but is loud on what India must do from a domestic standpoint from an adaptation and mitigation perspective. The National Action Plan outlines eight crucial national missions for sustainable development. These include emphasis on solar energy, energy efficiency programmes, creation of a sustainable habitat; conservation of water, preservation of the Himalayan ecosystem, creation of a green India, sustainable agriculture and establishment of a platform of strategic knowledge for climate change. The action plan also proposes sector-wise benchmarks and contributes to its own version of domestic carbon credit trade. It also suggests caps on energy use in polluting sectors, such as thermal power, cement, fertiliser and iron and steel. Going further, it provides for retirement of certain categories of old and inefficient coal-based power plants and phasing out of end-of-life vehicles with the mandatory obligation on the last owners to hand them over at designated collection centres. All the recommendations are very laudable from the climate problem mitigation perspective but the trillion dollar question is whether we will see the proposed measures actioned in our lifetime. How effective the national action plan will be remains to be seen but there is a discernible urgency – and arising out of that are huge economic possibilities.

It needs to be emphasised that the policy presents not just an opportunity to go on an environmental correction course but to profit from it to the tune of billions of dollars. In a sense we can profit from environment boil. The prospects include carbon trading mechanisms from which close to $ 100 billion can be garnered by Indian companies by 2010, an opportunity which a industry analyst describes as ethical profiteering. Then there is the chance to benefit from clean technologies – a$3 trillion market for low carbon tech is anticipated by 2050. Further with India’s green building footprint growing from 20,000 sq ft in 2003 to 8.8 million sq ft to date the construction industry is also presented with possibilities of making more moolah.

Economic profit can come along with environmental improvement when India engages its attention on the renewables energy basket. With rising CO2 levels and ecocalypse staring at us a bright future can only lie in embracing options like solar, wind, geothermal and biofuels.
Is India up to it?