Reducing India’s carbon footprint

India still relies for most of its electricity supply on fossil fuels, mainly coal. Demand for power is being driven by the rapidly expanding Indian economy.

 

According to the International Energy Agency, India is on track to become the world’s third largest emitter of carbon dioxide by 2020, producing over two billion tons of CO2 each year. The large scale deployment of wind energy, however, could save substantial amounts of carbon. The Global Wind Energy Council estimates that as much as 20 Gigawatts (GW) of wind power could be installed in India by 2020, producing 44,000 GWh of electricity and saving more than 30 million  tons of CO2 every year. 

 

ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation), the company which commissioned the Kutch wind farm, has the ambition to become carbon neutral. According to the company’s Director (Onshore), AK Hazarika, “ONGC has taken the ongoing climate change and global warming very seriously... Sustainable development solutions can be evolved into a business model of a company, thereby creating value for the company and contributing effectively to climate change mitigation.”