Saran, who is accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the G-8 summit in Japan where climate change is one of the important issues for discussion, said the biggest challenge before the Government in ensuring long-term sustainable development was finding cheap and clean sources of energy. This is where the national action plan will try to make a difference by exploring ways to make a shift from conventional sources of energy to alternative sources.

“This is a plan for ensuring sustainable development. Even if there were no climate change, the biggest constraint that India would face while trying to maintain a high growth rate would be in finding alternative and cheap sources of energy. This plan is also aimed at providing energy security for the country,” Saran told The Indian Express.

“Without making a strategic shift from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels and from non-renewable energy sources to renewable sources of energy, the energy constraint cannot be addressed,” he said.

Saran said climate change, energy security and development were closely related and neither can be seen in isolation.

“Unless we link climate change with energy security, we would not be able to go very far,” he said.

Saran said it would be a mistake to believe that because India was not undertaking any targeted reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions, it wasn't doing anything for global environment.

“Setting targets means nothing if one is not able to stick to it. We do not know by how much will we be able to reduce our emissions by taking the measures that we are contemplating. In particular areas where we know this, we would be willing to reveal targets. We cannot take targets when we don't know whether we will be able to adhere to it or not. The case of the developed countries is slightly different. They have knowingly undertaken targets and done nothing to stick to them,” he said.

He said the success of the national action plan was not contingent on cooperation from developed countries though its impact would increase significantly if those countries kept their promise of facilitating transfer of technology and funds.