Climate change and options for India

Abstract

Recent scientific evidence on Climate Change is a little more compelling than ever before for global community to take action. While there is incentive for developing countries like India and China to take advantage of the Clean Development Mechanism and encash on Carbon credits, mainly through projects which would come up anyway, even without CDM, there is little incentive for giving up their main reliance on coal at least for production of electricity. In the case of India, the nuclear option is not competitive with coal based power, and as such may serve only its strategic programme. Besides, neither India is a big contributor to GHG emission at present, nor is its current growth rate as carbon intensive as that of China.