India's COP26 commitments to offer massive investment opportunities: ICRA

India’s ambitious emission control commitments made at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow recently, open massive opportunities for investment across segments and require timely intervention by the government and large capex requirements in greenhouse gas-emitting sectors like power, industry and transport, rating agency ICRA said.

The roadmap is expected to benefit India with not just carbon reduction, but also building new technologies in energy efficiency and green fuels, the report said.

Investment opportunities will be available in segments such as renewables, carbon capture technologies, the EV ecosystem, improvement in energy efficiencies and ethanol blending, ICRA said.

“This would be a daunting task and would need massive policy interventions to ensure investments across the aforementioned sectors remain profitable enough to sustain well beyond 2030,” The Economic Times quoted Rohit Ahuja, head of research and outreach of ICRA, as saying.

The research report by ICRA analysed the commitments up to 2030 and the net-zero target for 2070.

At present, the government has set a policy that makes it mandatory for coal-fuelled power projects to use biomass pellets as 5 percent of their fuel mix. The plan called SAMARTH, which will help farmers earn around Rs 15,000 crore annually, is likely to be mentioned in the budget speech by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Mint reported quoting unnamed government officials.

The plan will check pollution from crop-stubble burning by facilitating their sale after being converted into pellets.

Around eight countries in the world have already achieved net-zero emissions target, the report said, adding that they are comparatively smaller economies like Bhutan and Cambodia.

For India to achieve its net-zero target by 2070, the government has to focus on controlling greenhouse gas emissions from power, industry and transport sectors, which together emit 90 percent of the CO2, as per 2019 data of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the report said.

“Achieving net-zero by 2070 needs carbon sequestration at the same level of GHG emission. This means, post-2030 projections, a steady pace of sequestration (1-3 percent range) would be needed to reach the net-zero levels in 2070,” the report said, adding that the target calls for a huge investment at an estimated level of Rs 115-135 billion annually, as per a Niti Aayog report.