- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA, along with two South-east Asian nations of Indonesia and the Philippines, will join South Africa as the earliest recipients of a multi-billion dollar pilot programme aimed at accelerating their transition from coal power to clean energy, the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), which was created by the world’s biggest economies in the late 2000s to aid poorer countries accelerate their shift to a low-carbon economy, on Thursday (4) said.
The four nations account for 15 per cent global emissions related to coal – considered the dirtiest fossil fuel due to the emission and pollution it causes. Reducing their emissions faster will facilitate the global effort for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, a key goal of the United Nations COP26 climate summit which is currently underway in Glasgow, Scotland.
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Reuters cited Indonesian energy minister Arifin Tasrif saying that his country was committed to reducing and replacing its coal-power plants with renewable sources.
“Climate change is a global challenge that needs to be addressed by all parties through leading by example,” he said in a statement.
According to the CIF, Accelerating Coal Transition programme was the first to target the developing countries that lack adequate resources to finance the shift away from the ‘dirtiest fuel’ – a move which is considered vital to restrict the rise of global temperature to 1.5-degree Celsius by the year 2030.
While COP26 meets to ban coal, Asia builds several new coal power plants
South Africa said earlier this week that it would be the first beneficiary.
The new programme has been taken up by the Group of Seven advanced economies and is backed by financial pledges from the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany and Denmark, the CIF said.
Denmark said it would donate 100 million Danish crowns (£11.5 million) to the programme’s “efforts to purchase and decommission coal power plants and invest in new energy sources”.
“We must have sustainable plans for decommissioning coal power plants. For example, we need to ensure alternative employment for the local population, including retraining programmes,” Danish foreign minister Jeppe Kofod said.
Experts are worried that the transition from coal to renewable sources is not happening fast enough.
“Coal is a high-emitting power source at odds with a climate-smart future. Markets are starting to trend in the right direction, but the transition is not happening fast enough to respond to the urgency of the climate crisis,” Mafalda Duarte, chief executive of the CIF, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The CIF will invest in projects ranging from bolstering nations’ domestic capacity to manage energy transitions to repurposing or decommissioning coal assets and creating opportunities for communities that are dependent on coal, the Reuters report added.
