Union Minister for Environment Prakash Javadekar and MoS (Independent Charge) for Power Piyush Goyal participate in the interactive session with the Twitterati through a "Talkathon" in New Delhi on Friday. (Press Trust of India photo)
Ahead of global climate summit in Paris starting next week, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar today expressed hope that the world would be able to come out with a "good climate agreement" to combat global warming.
"Today I am leaving for Paris with a hope that world will be able to arrive at a good climate agreement because this is the need of the hour. All countries are suffering, particularly the poor sections of the society," he said while addressing the questions on CoP21.
Terming the India's climate action plans or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) as "ambitious and comprehensive", Mr Javadekar said that the country would propose "best and just equitable" deal at the 21st session of Conference of Parties (CoP-21) which aims to reach at a legally binding agreement to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
"Every time many people thought India opposes, this time we are proposing what can be the real good alternative, what can be the best climate deal, what can be a just equitable deal," he said.
Countering an allegation that India's INDC was "non-ambitious and dependable on coal", Mr Javadekar said that it was appreciated in the beginning but such criticisms do come up before the summit.
Quoting a report, he said: "India has come up with more than its fair share as compared to the developed world."
On the need of $2.5 trillion to finance the INDC over the next decade, Mr Javadekar said keeping in mind India's growth, it would not be difficult to mobilise resources through public or private funding. "We have worked out the mathematics and it's not just a wish list but concretely backed by money power," he said.
Answering a query, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, who also participated in the event, exuded confidence that India would achieve its target of 175,000 MW installed capacity of renewable energy by 2022.
"We have very cogent deliverable plans on the ground on how the target has to be met... It's not over ambitious on the backdrop of the seriousness of the concern of the environment. It's the need of the hour," he said.
With the help of technological innovations and economies of scale, he said that renewable energy would not only become viable but would "add tremendously" to the energy security and provide affordable power in the next 25-30 years.
Mr Goyal, however, said coal would continue to be the mainstay of India's power need to provide cheap electricity to the poor people until availability of alternate source of energy to meet the requirement. However, he said the government emphasized on efficient coal plants.
Lamenting over the lack of climate fund contributed by the developed countries, he said India was also preparing itself for financing its renewable energy thrust and would soon launch one billion dollar private equity fund, initially seeded by the government companies.