US President elect Joe Biden’s pledge to rejoin the Paris Agreement on his first day in office augurs well for India’s renewable energy sector
With Joe Biden pledging to rejoin the Paris Agreement on his first day as President in office, climate change action could intensify in the US as well as rest of the world. The US, which is one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, is the first country to pull out of the agreement because former president Donald Trump argued that it benefited countries like China, Russia and India at the cost of the US.
The Paris Agreement dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by 196 countries in 2016. It committed the parties to limit rising global temperature to below 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to attempt to keep it to 1.5 Celsius degree rise.
Biden’s plan for a clean energy revolution and environmental justice seeks to ensure that the US achieves 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050; build a stronger and more resilient nation by making smart infrastructure investments to rebuild the nation; stand up to the abuse of power by polluters who disproportionately harm communities of colour and low-income communities; and rally the rest of the world to meet the threat of climate change.
The climate and environmental justice proposal proposes to make a federal investment of $1.7 trillion over the next ten years, leveraging private sector and state and local investments to total to more than $5 trillion. There will be also a roll back Trump tax incentives that enrich corporations at the expense of American jobs and the environment.
Biden has also proposed to convene a climate world summit in his first 100 days in office to directly engage the leaders of the major carbon-emitting nations of the world to persuade them to join the United States in making more ambitious national pledges, above and beyond the commitments they have already made. He also wants the world to lock in enforceable international agreements to reduce emissions in global shipping and aviation, and embrace the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol to curb hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas, which could deliver a 0.5 degree Celsius reduction in global warming by mid-century.
India has its own reason, too, to chair Biden’s vow to rejoin the Paris Agreement. Apart from contributing to global efforts to fight climate change, Biden’s pledge also recommits the US to the Green Climate Fund to help developing countries better manage the adverse effects of climate change. India is set to gain from the Green Climate Fund’s investments in renewable energy sector in the country.