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Sustainable development in India encompasses a variety of development schemes in social, cleantech (clean energy, clean water and sustainable agriculture) and human resources segments, having caught the attention of both Central and State governments and also public and private sectors.
In fact, India is expected to begin the greening of its national income accounting, making depletion in natural resources wealth a key component in its measurement of gross domestic product (GDP).
India's sustained efforts towards reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) will ensure that the country's per capita emission of GHG will continue to be low until 2030-31, and it is estimated that the per capita emission in 2031 will be lower than per capita global emission of GHG in 2005, according to a new study. Even in 2031, India's per capita GHG emissions would stay under four tonnes of CO2, which is lower than the global per capita emission of 4.22 tonnes of CO2 in 2005.
Major Achievements
The number of carbon credits issued for emission reduction projects in India is set to triple to 246 million by December 2012 from 72 million in November 2009, according to a CRISIL Research study.
This will cement India's second position in the global carbon credits market (technically called Certified Emission Reduction units or CERs). The growth in CER issuance will be driven by capacity additions in the renewable energy sector and by the eligibility of more renewable energy projects to issue CERs. Consequently, the share of renewable energy projects in Indian CERs will increase to 31 per cent.
CRISIL Research expects India's renewable energy capacity to increase to 20,000 megawatt (MW) by December 2012, from the current 15,542 MW.
The contribution of renewable energy to the power business in India has now reached 70 per cent, compared to 10 per cent in 2000, in terms of project numbers and dollar value, according to Anita George, Regional Industry Director, Asia
Infrastructure and Natural Resources, International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Growth in use of green technologies has put India on the green-building leader board with countries such as the US. "About 2-3 per cent of all construction in India is green, as good as (in) the US. In the next two or three years, we want to bring it up to 10 per cent, which will put us on top," as per the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC).
The US$ 1.79 billion Indian lighting market is estimated to be growing at 18 per cent annually and switching rapidly to energy-efficient systems. In value terms, about US$ 425.58 million of the current market size belongs to the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), according to Electrical Lamp and Component Manufacturers' Association of India (ELCOMA) statistics.
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