[NEW DELHI] India’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rose by 58 per cent between 1994 and 2007 with the energy sector contributing over half of the emissions, a new government report said.

 

But India’s emissions per unit national wealth (or gross domestic product), a measure of GHG intensity, declined by 30 per cent during this period, the report showed.

 

India released its last emissions estimate in 1994. Minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh, who released the new report this week (11 May), said India was the first developing country to release ‘updated’ estimates.

 

India’s emissions are up from 1.2 billion tonnes in 1994 to 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007.

The country now ranks fifth globally in total GHG emissions, behind the United States, China, the European Union and Russia in 2007. The emissions of the United States and China are four times that of India in 2007.

India’s energy sector contributed 58 per cent of emissions followed by industry with 22 per cent and 17 per cent by agriculture.

In November 2009, ahead of the international climate summit in Copenhagen, India announced it would reduce its ‘GHG emission intensity’ — amount of gases released per unit growth in national wealth — by 20–25 percent between 2005 and 2020.

 

Ramesh said India would continue to improve its methods for emission estimates, bridge data gaps and develop country-specific GHG emission estimate models.

 

In October 2009, India announced setting up a new climate research centre and building climates satellites to improve data collection (see Weather station network to improve data collection in South Asia (See Weather station network to improve data collection in South Asia) .