THE 2024 general elections in India came at a time when the country faced T bouts of climate-linked adversities and challenges. Small wonder that climate change has entered the election manifestos of almost all the contesting political parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party has acknowledged the current shift in energy sources by declaring that it would continue to raise the share of renewable energy in the country's electricity mix. The Indian National Congress has pledged to set up a green new deal investment programme to promote the renewable energy sector and create green jobs, and an environment protection and climate change authority to enforce national and state climate action plans. Policymakers are also coming to terms with the fact that India's development must be in line with the reality of climate change.
The fact is that extreme and changing weather patterns, rising sea levels and soaring temperatures can undo a lot of development progress and economic growth achieved over the past decades; they can pose a serious threat to food security, spur a surge in disease outbreaks, fuel migration and even trigger conflicts. Thus, the new government has an arduous task of ensuring economic growth while tackling the effects of climate change. One way to achieve this is by ensuring transition to clean energy.
MOVE ON ENERGY TRANSITION
India has made great strides in the field of renewable energy, with non-fossil fuels, excluding nuclear power, making up 43.12 per cent of the total installed capacity, according to the India Climate and Energy Dashboard by Union government think tank NITI Aayog. Installed capacity of solar power has increased twelvefold in the past eight years, says data with the dashboard as on March 31, 2024. This means India is on course to secure 50 per cent of its power capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030-a commitment made under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
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