NATCOM Emission scenarios and Carbon Emissions projections for India

Scenarios are alternative images of future and are useful tools for learning about complex environmental systems behaviour. The objective of this study is to generate future socio-economic cum emissions scenarios and projections for carbon emissions in each scenario for the time period up to 2030. There are not many studies available in India on scenario construction though different government organisations have developed scenarios for short-term to long-term future to aid policymaking. This study generates four scenarios of the future state of Indian economy in the next 30 years as combinations of market integration of economy and centralized v/s decentralized nature of governance. The scenarios capture the essence of the internationally accepted UN IPCC SRES future scenarios. and are termed as IA1, IA2, IB1 and IB2. The key driving forces are economic growth, population, emphasis on heterogeneity and self-reliance in regions, speed of introduction of new and efficient technologies, extent of cultural and social interactions. While the scenarios are being developed for the emission projections at the national-level, these could also be extended to include local energy-environment concerns. Storylines of the four scenarios differ in how demographic structure changes with socio-economic conditions, how does technological developments and market integration with global economy drive the economic growth, how decentralized economic development activities evolve, how protection of local and regional environments is implemented etc.. The scenario characteristics have been quantified into parameters like fuel supply and price, technology cost, efficiency parameters, transmission and distribution losses, Investment capacity, Technology choices, discount rate which have then been analysed in an integrated energy-emissions modelling framework using the MARKAL and AIM-Enduse, and demand projection models. The results of modelling analysis show that energy consumption grows more than 1.6 to 2.6 times and the carbon emissions grow by 2.1 to 3.2 times across the four scenarios. Coal in power sector continues to dominate the Indian energy as well as carbon emissions sector. The per capita carbon emissions show an increasing trend dampened only by a simultaneous rise in population.