India’s Need for Coal-Fueled Growth Complicates Paris Climate Summit

As world leaders gathered in Paris for the opening of the international climate conference on Nov. 30, excavators in a densely forested corner of eastern India were at work extracting coal at what in coming years is projected to become the biggest mine in Asia. The Magadh project, in the Indian state of Jharkhand, is part of a massive push by the world’s third-largest carbon emitter to close the gap between the amount of coal it produces domestically and the amount it’s consuming, particularly for electricity generation, as its economy grows. India’s aim is to produce 1.5 billion metric tons of the fossil fuel by 2020, up about 600 million tons in 2012. (It currently consumes some 800 million metric tons a year.) To make this happen, India will need to open the equivalent of a new coal mine every month until the end of this decade. That thirst for coal—the single biggest source of man-made carbon emissions—has made India a country to watch in Paris, where officials from around the world are meeting to try and hammer out a deal to slow rising global temperatures. For India’s leaders, the expansion in coal generation is needed to power India’s growth and lift hundreds of millions of Indians out of poverty. One in five of India’s 1.3 billion people continue to live without access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. For numerous others, power is spotty, with blackouts an everyday fact of life. Coal is dirt...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change coal global warming India Narendra Modi Paris climate conference South Asia Source Type: news