This is an archive article published on December 1, 2023
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Not giving up on coal anytime soon: India
Modi is scheduled to attend several events on Friday before heading back home in the evening. The highlight of his visit would be a national statement that he is expected to make in the afternoon.
India is often criticised for not phasing out its coal power plants fast enough, but it has maintained it needs to continue with coal for sometime to meet its growing electricity demands.
Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Dubai late Thursday for the COP28 climate meeting, India reiterated it was not in a position to abandon its reliance on coal for electricity generation anytime soon even as it rapidly ramps up renewable energy supplies to ensure quick transition to green energy.
“Coal is and would remain an important part of India’s energy mix, it has always been, as we move forward to meet our developmental priorities in our country,” Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said at a press conference in New Delhi, ahead of the Prime Minister’s visit to Dubai for the conference where use of coal is once again expected to come up during discussions.
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Modi is scheduled to attend several events on Friday before heading back home in the evening. The highlight of his visit would be a national statement that he is expected to make in the afternoon.
He will also hold bilateral meetings with other world leaders. More than 140 heads of states or governments are slated to attend the high-level segment of the COP28 meeting Friday.
India is often criticised for not phasing out its coal power plants fast enough, but it has maintained it needs to continue with coal for sometime to meet its growing electricity demands.
Responding to questions on India’s climate actions, Kwatra said India happened to be among a handful of large economies that were on track to fulfil all their climate commitments.
“India is one of the very few major economies that is well on track to complete its obligated NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions). In fact, we had announced and upgraded our NDCs last year, and we are very happy to say that we are now well on our way even to meet those upgraded NDC targets,” he said.
“We are proactive in taking practical climate action measures, and basing them on a very firm conceptual understanding and a very firm belief that our development has to be green development, while at the same time it also triangulates well with our developmental priorities,” he said.
India is often criticised for not phasing out its coal power plants fast enough, but it has maintained it needs to continue with coal for sometime to meet its growing electricity demands. 
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