Says George Monbiot (link via Jo):
"With some justice, India has suspected that it is being urged to implement global policies that the rich nations have no intention of honouring.
Indians are also painfully aware that the rich nations in the past deliberately prevented their nation from developing. England, for example, banned the import of calico (cotton cloth) from India, in order to protect its own textile industries. It went on to smash Indian looms and cut off the thumbs of Indian weavers in order prevent them from making their superior products. As Ha Joon Chang shows in his book Kicking Away the Ladder, England's industrial revolution was made possible by preventing India's. Many people there suspect that attempts to limit India's future greenhouse gas emissions have the same purpose.
Partly as a result, and partly because it's the quickest and easiest route to mass electrification, India has been investing heavily in coal plants, while neglecting its great potential to produce renewable energy. But suddenly this seems to be changing. Draft documents released today show that the government intends to announce 20GW of solar power investments by 2020.
This is equivalent to one eighth of India's installed capacity of all forms of electricity generation, or roughly a quarter of the UK's (we have 80GW of plant, about 70% of which is powered by fossil fuel). China and Japan have similar targets, but because most of India is closer to the equator, the capacity factor (the amount of power you get from any given amount of plant) will be higher in India.
Well that's the good news. The bad news is that India is also in the middle of a programme to increase coal capacity by 79GW – equivalent to the entire UK power sector – by 2012. The new solar plant will supplement, not substitute, its other forms of power generation. But at least the $19bn India is spending on it shows that the country is starting to get serious about climate change. Whether it makes any commitments at Copenhagen is another matter."
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