New Delhi, Nov 25,2021: The air quality in the national capital continued to remain in the ‘very poor’ category on Thursday, as the, air quality Index (AQI) stood at 362 according to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR).
The air quality Index (AQI) on Wednesday was recorded at 328.
According to the SAFAR bulletin, the effective farm fire count has reduced to 432 and its contribution to Delhi’s PM 2.5 on Thursday is 2 percent.
The concentration of PM 2.5 and PM 10 stood at 201, in the ‘very poor’ and 337 in the ‘poor’ category respectively around 11 am, as per the agency.
Earlier the agency said from November 27 onwards local surface winds are likely to increase which will result in improvement of air quality.
Several areas in the national capital including ITO, Lodhi Road, and Mathura Road recorded air quality in the ‘very poor’ category with an AQI of 411, 309, and 346 while the AQI at Anand Vihar and Jahangirpuri were in the ‘severe’ category with an AQI 436and 463 respectively.
According to data from Central Pollution Control Board the Air Quality Index in the neighbouring parts of Delhi, also was in the ‘very poor’ to ‘severe’ category including Faridabad (at 438), Ghaziabad (314), Gurugram (334) and Noida (414).
An AQI between zero and 50 is considered good, 51 and 100 is satisfactory, between 101 and 200 is moderate, 201 and 300 is poor, 301 and 400 is very poor, while AQI between 401 and 500 is severe.
Meanwhile the Delhi government on Wednesday said that schools, colleges and educational institutions in the national capital will reopen from Monday, November 29 onwards.
New Delhi, Nov 14,2021: India on Saturday pushed nearly 200 nations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26, to accept a deal which significantly watered down the text on the use of coal with inclusion of ‘phase down,’ instead of ‘phase out’ coal power. The final text urged the nations to accelerate efforts to “phase down” unfiltered coal and “phase out” inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.
The finale, after two weeks of laboured negotiations, came after an intense process of opposition and demand for revision to the final text over the sticking point — a call to accelerate the ‘phase-out’ of unabated coal power, from plants that don’t use carbon-capture technology. India, finding support from China to change the text, offered a new version of the paragraph that used ‘phase-down’ to describe what needs to happen to coal use. This was incorporated into the final text endorsed by almost 200 nations.
The COP26 deal calls on all countries to accelerate their emission cuts by submitting new national plans by 2022, three years earlier than agreed in Paris. The agreement recognises that commitments made by the countries so far to cut emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases are not enough to prevent planetary warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures and asks the governments to strengthen those targets by the end of next year, rather than every five years, as previously required.
“I think today, we can say with credibility that we’ve kept 1.5 (degrees) within reach,” said Alok Sharma, president of the COP26 summit. “But its pulse is weak, and we will only survive if we keep our promises.”
The Glasgow Climate Pact has in no way succeeded in going far enough to keep the world below a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature rise, opined Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment.
“The pact’s fundamental and fatal flaw is in the very first page, where it says that it notes the importance for some of the concept of climate justice. We cannot erase the fact that certain countries – the US, EU-27, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Russia and now China – have consumed roughly 70 per cent of the carbon budget, the space in the atmosphere that is available to keep the world below the 1.5 degree temperature rise.
“The challenge is that the world has run out of carbon budget, but some 70 per cent of the world’s people still need the right to development. As these countries grow, they will add emissions and take the world to catastrophic levels of temperature rise. It is for this reason, climate justice is not an add-on concept for some, but the pre-requisite for an effective and ambitious agreement. This lack of understanding is at the core of the problem,” said Narain.
Reflecting the demand of poor and vulnerable countries, the text notes that wealthy nations failed to stump up a separate annual sum of 100 billion dollars, they promised over a decade ago and urges developed country parties to at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to developing country parties from 2019 levels by 2025.
However, the text of the agreement has no reference to a specific finance facility for the loss and damage climate change has already caused in the developing world and only promises future “dialogue” on the subject.
According to Somesh Kumar, Partner and National Leader – Power and Utilities, Ernst and Young India, financing has emerged as the primary challenge, especially for developing nations, to balance between economic and climate goals.
“Adequate financing combined with seamless technology access can help fast racks clean transition globally. With more than 150 parties submitting updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the CoP 26 acknowledges almost 90 per cent of global emissions and over 90 per cent of global GDP being covered by mid-century net zero or carbon neutrality commitments,” said Kumar.
LONDON, Nov 3,2021: Indonesia could phase out coal-fired power plants by 2040 if it gets sufficient financial help from the international community, the finance minister told Reuters.
The Southeast Asian archipelago is the world’s fourth-most populous country and eighth biggest emitter of greenhouse gas, with coal making up about 65% of its energy mix. It is also the world’s biggest coal exporter.
Visiting the Scottish city of Glasgow for the COP26 conference, Sri Mulyani Indrawati said Indonesia wouldannounce on Wednesday detailed plans to move to cleaner energy, with the phase-out of coal being the key issue.
Previously, Indonesia said it planned to phase out coal for electricity by 2056, as part of a plan to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2060 or earlier.
“If we are going to put forward until 2040, then we need to have funding to retire coal earlier and to build the new capacity of renewable energy,” Sri Mulyani said.
“That is exactly what has now become the core issue and I’m now as the finance minister calculating what does it mean to retire coal earlier. How much does it cost us?” she said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week told the UK parliament that President Joko Widodo had said Indonesia was going to bring forward the abolition of coal use to 2040.
Indonesia had not previously confirmed such a plan.
Sri Mulyani told Reuters that meeting such a target was conditional on getting financial help from multilateral institutions, the private sector and developed countries.
She said the plans to be announced on Wednesday moved Indonesia’s climate targets beyond “rhetoric” into the technical details and that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other financial institutions were “very excited” with their ideas.
The ADB is leading a group of financial institutions to devise plans to speed up the closings of coal-fired power plants in Asia, including in Indonesia, by buying the assets and winding them down.
Jakarta has identified 5.5 gigawatts of coal power plants that could be retired early in the next 8 years, estimating this would cost $25 billion to $30 billion.
Sri Mulyani said the country would also need international support to ensure electricity remains affordable when it switches to renewable sources, citing a temporary calculation of a need for $10 billion to $23 billion in “implicit subsidies” for renewable power projects until 2030.