Striving towards a circular economy: climate policy and renewable energy in India
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Striving towards a circular economy: climate policy and renewable energy in India Aparna Sawhney1 Received: 31 March 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract As India prepares to emerge as a five trillion-dollar economy, it is critical for the growth to be sustainable. Given the high incidence of energy poverty, one of the greatest challenges for the country is to ensure universal access to clean electricity to its population by 2030. This article outlines the key policies implemented in India for the transition, including the radical legislative changes to restructure the electricity sector for greater use of renewable energy, and ambitious domestic target revisions running parallel to the international commitment to limit global warming. It highlights the progress achieved in renewable energy transition of the power sector during the last 5 years since signing of the Paris Agreement, but also notes that little attention has been devoted to the waste management from the renewable energy sector. There is urgent need for policy consistency across sectors in India to ensure the adoption of the essential principle of a circular economy in the development of “clean” renewable energy. Graphic abstract
* Aparna Sawhney [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Centre for International Trade and Development, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India
Introduction As India aspires to emerge as a five trillion-dollar economy by 2024–2025, it is critical to ensure that the growth is sustainable. The effort to double the size of the economy entails
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enormous demand for raw materials and energy, and imminent environmental stress from resource extraction and waste generation. While India has been among the top economic performers of the world in recent years, its impressive economic growth conceals the environmental costs that it has incurred. In 2018, India ranked 177 out of 180 nations in the Environmental Performance Index—far below that of other emerging countries like Brazil and China. The poor environmental performance was due to the deterioration of ambient environmental quality stems primarily driven by the escalating particulate pollution, unsanitary solid waste disposal, untreated liquid waste and sewage released into rivers, excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, increasing non-biodegradable hazardous and electronic waste, etc. The degradation of air, water and soil health in the country has imposed a huge human cost in terms of morbidity and mortality,1 and there is an urgent need to reduce pollution in production and consumption activities, and to increase resource-efficiency. It is essential to decouple economic growth from resource use stress and environmental degradation. Resource efficiency can be enhanced through circular economy practices, whereby wastes are recovered and reused in production in order to minimize waste. More
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