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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

India’s hazy sky backdrop to Obama’s climate talks

President joins India in breathing world’s dirtiest air

An Indian man riding his motorcycle covers his face from smog Thursday in New Delhi, India. (Associated Press)
Katy Daigle Associated Press

NEW DELHI – When President Barack Obama arrives in New Delhi on Sunday he will join the Indian capital’s masses in breathing some of the world’s filthiest air.

Hazy skies will serve as the backdrop to meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other officials who are expected to discuss India’s biggest environmental woes: Heavy reliance on fossil fuels that has transformed New Delhi into the planet’s most polluted capital and made India the third biggest national emitter of greenhouse gases.

With 1.26 billion people and counting, India’s energy choices can make or break global efforts to prevent climate change. Experts expect the U.S. will be willing to help India finance ambitious plans to boost production of cleaner energy. That would allow Asia’s third-largest economy to reduce reliance on coal and oil but not derail the energy-intensive growth need to reduce staggering poverty.

“You cannot expect India to punch far above its weight. But you also can’t have India doing everything in a climate-unfriendly way,” said Samir Saran, a climate policy analyst with the Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation. “We have to make a special plan for India.”

As hopes rise for a new global climate pact in Paris later this year, some think Obama can broker with India another landmark deal like last year’s U.S.-China climate agreement in which China pledged to rein in emissions starting in 2030.

India applauded that deal for acknowledging that developing countries have a right to keep growing, and polluting for a time, while the U.S., which industrialized long ago, begins curbing emissions now.

A possible U.S.-India deal, however, would be unlikely to see India following China’s example in setting a date for its emissions to peak. Instead, the two sides are expected to build on the roughly $1 billion already spent under a U.S.-India clean energy partnership.

Delhi has long refused to curb carbon emissions while hundreds of millions of Indians live in dire poverty. Instead, India has pledged to reduce its emissions intensity – how much carbon dioxide it puts out per dollar of economic activity.

It’s also pledged an enormous increase in installed renewable energy capacity by 2022 with a five-fold increase in solar capacity to 100 gigawatts, a 30-fold boost for wind to 60 GW and a massive overhaul of India’s dilapidated energy grid. The plan is estimated to require $162 billion in investment, and India will be looking for the U.S. government and businesses to help.

India, already the world’s third-largest producer of solar energy and fourth largest in wind energy, argues that by vastly increasing its renewable energy market, it can lower costs to lure private investors away from traditional coal-fired energy projects.

“It’s a huge amount of money. They need to fill in the details as opposed to offering to an even grander vision,” said Tim Buckley, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “Modi’s played a very clever game in saying: You give us the capital first, and then we’ll make the commitments.”