India’s emissions up by 52% from 1994 to 2007

The overall emission figure of 1.9 billion tonnes is quite close to various other estimates for India’s annual emissions given by international agencies. But the latest INCCA figure is the most comprehensive study of India’s emission profile in the past six years. The last time India carried out such an exercise was in 2004 when it reported its emission profile for 1994 as required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Significantly,India’s forest cover has been acting as a very effective carbon sink capturing 0.17 billion tonnes of carbon in 2007,thereby bringing down the net emissions from 1.9 billion tonnes to 1.73 billion tonnes. “Interestingly,the emissions of the US and China are almost four times that of India in 2007,” said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh who oversaw the release of the latest estimate.

India is the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China,US and Russia. If the EU is taken as one entity,India takes the fifth position.

The energy sector,that includes electricity generation as well as transport,formed the biggest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 with 58 per cent of total emissions. Industry sector accounted for 22 per cent,agriculture contributed 17 per cent while the remaining three per cent came from waste. India’s per capita emissions,an important yardstick,in 2007 was 1.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent,up from 1.4 tonnes in 1994.