India to Cut Emissions, but Fight Targets

India is ready to cut emissions intensity 20%-25% by 2020, but won’t accept legally binding targets, raising chances next week’s global summit on climate change won’t yield definitive results.

India also won’t accept an agreement that stipulates the setting of a “peaking year” for emissions, Forests and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said while outlining India’s strategy ahead of the United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen.

A peaking year implies the setting of a date beyond which a nation must begin reducing emissions.

“There is no question of compromising on these two nonnegotiables,” the minister told lawmakers, adding these issues were “complete dark, red lines.”

Mr. Ramesh’s statements come on the heels of pledges made by China and the U.S. last month to reduce emissions. China and the U.S. are the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases; India is fourth.

India opposes binding carbon-emissions cuts at the cost of slowing economic growth. Mr. Ramesh said the emissions-reduction targets were voluntary and unilateral, and don’t depend on the outcome of the summit.

“India, of all the 192 countries in the world, owes a responsibility not to the world but to itself to take climate change seriously,” he said.

The minister outlined a series of measures by which India proposes to meet its target on reducing emissions intensity, or the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product.

Mr. Ramesh said proposals will be made to legislate mandatory fuel-efficiency standards for all vehicles by December 2011, and mandatory green building codes will be recommended to states and municipal administrations.

India will also make amendments to the Energy Conservation Act to enable emissions-intensity reductions and report regularly on the state of the country’s forests, he said.

“We will ensure 50% of all new [power-plant] capacity will be based on clean-coal technology that will substantially reduce CO2 emissions from our power plants,” Mr. Ramesh said.

“This target puts pressure squarely back on industrialized country leaders,” said Martin Kaiser, climate-policy director at Greenpeace International.

More than 100 nations are set to gather in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18 to attempt to draft a new accord to tackle global warming beyond 2012. The participation of countries such as India, China and the U.S. is seen as being vital to any successful talks, but leaders of several nations have conceded negotiations proceeded too slowly to produce a legally binding accord in Copenhagen.