India’s and China’s problems with industrial pollution are old news, but now a report says these countries are increasing their reliance on carbon-intensive resources, making it tougher for everyone else to fight global warming.
While China and India have proposed a number of initiatives and programs to combat climate change, coal-fired power generation still remains the cheapest, but dirtiest, source of energy for these countries--and the most widely used, according to the Standard & Poor’s report.
“The extent to which these rapidly developing nations will be able to shift away from coal-fired generation toward low-carbon energy investments is crucial to reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide,” said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Aneesh Prabhu.
Like with many other global issues, this is a tug-of-war between developed and developing countries. India doesn’t believe it has contributed to excessive greenhouse gases and wants developed countries to explicitly address the issue before it does anything, the report says.
Energy consumption in India and China have shot up “due to rapid industrialization, a higher standard of living, and a shift to commercial fuels (e.g., fossil) from noncommercial fuels. These pressures have been particularly evident in China (and are now increasing in India), where power companies have been investing rapidly in new coal-fired generation.”
Coal consumption in China and India is forecast to increase by 3% a year between 2006 and 2030, compared with an increase of 0.6% a year for the developed countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to S&P analysts.
India's per capita greenhouse gas emissions of about 1.1 tons in 2004 was only about 23% of the global average. But that still makes it the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, trailing the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
Much of its expected growth will come from the Indian government's plans to add about 100,000 megawatts to the country's existing installed capacity of about 140,000 MW to meet its goal of "power for all" by 2012. "To meet this target, the government has proposed at least seven coal-fired ‘ultra-mega power’ projects,” S&P said.
India’s key cities like New Delhi and Mumbai are among the world’s most polluted. Fuel emissions, especially from diesel powered vehicles, and unregulated industrial emissions lead to dangerously high levels of pollution and respiratory diseases.
The non profit Center for Science and Environment estimates that each year, two-thirds of the 800,000 deaths attributed to air pollution worldwide, occur in developing Asian countries. It says Indian cities need to “base themselves on public transport, and manage their mobility by restraining cars. They need to leapfrog to cleaner vehicle technologies and fuels to cut their exposure to toxic fumes.”
