Introduction In November 2021 at COP26, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India announced the launch of the Lifestyles for Environment (LiFE) initiative, which aims to promote more environmentally responsible consumption and behaviour worldwide. In today’s context of the global energy crisis and the continued challenge of climate change, LiFE is an important opportunity to accelerate clean energy transitions. This paper looks at how India has integrated measures aligned with LiFE into its energy transition strategy, outlines the role of behavioural change and consumer choices in clean energy transitions, and provides a quantification of the emissions reduction potential of LiFE at the world level. It concludes with some reflections of the implications of LiFE for the G20.

India’s energy transition Framing India’s transition Energy has been at the heart of India’s developmental journey. For decades, India worked to provide its growing population with access to electricity, fuel for transport, and clean cooking fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). These efforts involved scaling up power generation, coal mining and oil refining capacity, and strengthening energy infrastructure and distribution networks. This helped lift millions of people out of poverty and fuelled the nation’s industrialisation. Since 2000, India’s per capita income has increased threefold, power generation capacity fourfold, and the stock of vehicles sixfold. Starting from a low base, key indicators of economic growth and development have caught up considerably with global averages. Nonetheless, India’s per capita GDP and CO2 emissions are only 40% of the world average.

Key per capita indicators in India as a percentage of global averages, 2000 and 2021

This development contributed to increasing prosperity but also led to increases in greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and imports of fossil fuels. The Indian government has therefore chosen an ambitious energy transition pathway to reach net zero emissions by 2070. The International Monetary Fund estimates that India will be the world’s third largest economy by 2027, and India is already on course to become the most populous country this year. Its critical challenge is to ensure secure and affordable energy for growth while advancing its net zero transition over the coming decades. To meet these challenges, India has embarked on a dynamic new phase in its energy transformation, which spans three broad areas. Firstly, it has launched important initiatives to bring down the prices and increase the supply of clean energy. These include a target of non-fossil fuel sources contributing to 50% of India’s power generation capacity by 2030; a National Green Hydrogen Mission with the ambition of establishing annual renewable hydrogen production of 5 million tonnes (Mt) by 2030; and biofuel mandates that target 30% blending of ethanol in petrol by 2030. Secondly, India is seeking to domesticate parts of the global supply chains that will be critical to its new energy economy. This includes the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme that promotes the domestic manufacturing of solar PV, advanced batteries and electric vehicles.

Energy access Electricity Around 50 million Indians – equivalent to the total population of South Korea – have gained access to electricity every year since 2010, mostly through the national grid. This contributed to more than half of the global improvement in access to electricity over this period. India has been one of the fastest countries in progressing from half of the population having access to achieving full access.

Recent progress in access to electricity in India and normalized rate of improvement in electrification in selected countries

This was possible thanks to several government policies, a strong central political commitment, and the creation of institutions equipped with the resources and mandates to pursue electrification. Another key to success was the use of geospatial data for planning and monitoring. In 2014, under the leadership of the Prime Minister Modi, the Government of India launched the DDUGJY programme focused on strengthening distribution networks and facilitating connections by co-financing grid projects. In 2017, the Saubhagya scheme was introduced, aimed at addressing last-mile connections by offering them for free and providing decentralised solutions to reach remote areas. However, the 2019-21 National Family Health Survey suggests that around 45 million people, of which three-quarters live in Central and Eastern India, still did not have access to electricity in that period, largely due to problems affording a grid connection. Important progress is being made on the reliability of supply, with the availability of power supply doubling in some regions and satisfaction levels increasing more than tenfold between 2015 and 2020.

Key energy efficiency indicators, India versus G20 and world averages

India is the world’s second largest cement producer. The country’s cement industry is among the world’s most energy efficient, with energy consumption of grey clinker 10% lower than the G20 average. India is also the world’s third largest car market. Average fuel consumption of new cars was 5.5 litres of gasoline equivalent/100 km in 2021, which is 20% below the global and G20 averages. India’s efficiency policies also extend to promoting behavioural change and consumer awareness. Efficient consummption is promoted through programmes such as the recent campaign on setting air conditioners at 24 °C. Policies have also supported market transformation through a combination of demand-side and supply-side measures. For example, India has achieved impressive results through bulk purchasing programmes such as the Unnati Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for ALL (UJALA) programme that radically pushed down the price of LEDs available on the market. India is also implementing the world’s largest agricultural demand-side management programme, aiming to replace inefficient agricultural pump sets. There are more than 21 million grid-connected pump sets in India and their deployment is on the rise. The programme aims to distribute 200 000 highly efficient pump-sets to farmers. These are all examples of government policies that aim to facilitate more sustainable behaviours and choices.

Electric vehicles In 2022, electric passenger vehicle sales in India reached nearly 1 million units across all segments – a record annual growth rate of over 200%. This resulted in EV’s share of the overall market rising to nearly 5%. Most of these were electric two- and three-wheelers. Given that this segment accounts for over 80% of the Indian vehicle market, electrification here can bring large reductions in emissions and fuel expenditures. At the same time, the market for larger passenger vehicles in India is growing rapidly. In 2022, India surpassed Japan to become the third largest car market in the world. Electric cars’ share of the Indian car market tripled in 2022 to reach nearly 1.5%. Ambitious policies such as the FAME II scheme support consumers to choose electric vehicles. To date, three electric car models are manufactured domestically in India and this number is expected to grow to nearly 20 in the coming years. As of January 2023, India has offered companies investing in battery cell technology just over USD 2 billion in government incentives, and over USD 1 billion worth of subsidies to consumers to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. The shift towards electromobility creates a new landscape of both opportunities and challenges for the Indian automotive industry. It also offers consumers significant cost savings: the IEA estimates that the payback period of an electric car is 5-6 years and only two years for an electric motorbike in India today.

Electric passenger vehicle market share in India, 2020-2021

Renewable energy With average capacity additions of about 12 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind power per year, India has been the third largest renewable energy market in the world for the last five years. India also has the third largest installed capacity of renewables in the world, with around 110 GW of wind and solar at the end of 2022. The country’s total renewable energy capacity, including hydro and bioenergy, stood at 175 GW. Even adjusting for India’s large population, India saw one of the largest increases of installed capacity of wind and solar of any emerging economy over the last decade. The growth of the renewables sector has been driven by a strong and stable policy framework. The target of installing 175 GW of capacity by 2022 gave clear direction to the sector, and government schemes helped to derisk investment. Policies such as the development of large solar parks facilitated access to land and infrastructure. As a result, the Indian renewable energy sector has attracted relatively low-cost capital from both domestic and international sources, including USD 13 billion in foreign direct investment inflow in the last two decades, according to the DPIIT. This, coupled with India’s excellent resources and technical know-how, has resulted in some of the lowest-cost renewable energy tariffs anywhere in the world.

Increase in distributed solar PV capacity in India, 2010-2022

India’s renewable energy sector will need to continue to grow strongly. Reaching the very ambitious target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity (including large hydro) by 2030 would require accelerating annual renewable capacity additions by several times compared with the average of recent years. Understanding the LiFE initiative Introducing LiFE The Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) initiative was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021 to encourage the adoption of sustainable lifestyles to tackle the environment and climate crisis. The initiative was further developed and formally launched in October 2022 by Prime Minister Modi and the UN Secretary General António Guterrez as Mission LiFE, a global mass-movement led by India to nudge individual and community behavioural change in order to reduce emissions, protect the environment and conserve resources. The Government of India’s think tank, NITI Aayog, published a summary paper outlining LiFE’s principles and theory of change. LiFE draws on India’s experience of mounting successful large-scale behavioural change campaigns to address waste, sanitation and clean cooking challenges. NITI Aayog’s paper gives examples of environmentally friendly ‘LiFE actions’ to adopt in daily life to conserve energy and water, reduce waste and plastic usage, promote healthy lifestyles and adopt sustainable food systems. Examples of LiFE actions regarding energy include choosing to use public or active transport, adopting energy efficient appliances, installing rooftop solar panels and practising fuel-efficient driving. The stated objective of Mission LiFE is to mobilise at least one billion Indians and other global citizens to take individual and collective action to protect and conserve the environment in the period 2022-28. The theory of change is to prompt interrelated shifts in the approaches of individuals, industry and government policy.

Quantifying the LiFE initiative Global emissions If adopted worldwide, the type of actions and measures targeted by LiFE – including behavioural changes and sustainable consumer choices – would reduce annual global CO2 emissions by more than 2 billion tonnes in 2030. This is about one-fifth of the emissions reductions needed by 2030 to put the world on a pathway towards net zero emissions. Just over half of these emissions reductions – about 1.1 Gt of CO2 – are associated with behavioural changes while the remainder comes from sustainable consumption choices.

Reductions in annual global CO2 emissions from LiFE measures, 2030

Within behavioural changes, the largest share (0.7 Gt) comes from the transport sector, through measures such as increased use of public transport in cities, more eco-efficient driving practices, and reduced flying through the use of teleconferencing or modal shift to high-speed rail, for example. About 0.4 Gt of emissions reductions are achieved in households. Critical measures in this regard include the reduction of indoor heating temperatures and the increase of indoor cooling temperatures, and turning off lights and appliances when not in use. There are also small reductions from behavioural changes impacting industrial production, such as increased recycling.

Outlook and implications for the G20 Goal 12 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals relates to sustainable consumption and production – and is closely linked to the framing of the LiFE initiative. LiFE is about offering choices to individuals and consumers from a wider range of more sustainable options. This means the role of policy in providing infrastructure, information and incentives is central. But behavioural changes and customer choices can also provide a driver for transforming markets and government policies. The G20 can play an important role in internationalising LiFE, since G20 countries account for around 80% of world GDP, 75% of global trade, and 60% of the global population.

Source:http://IEA