Climate change mitigation involves strategies aimed at decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting renewable energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and implementing sustainable practices. CSTEP focuses on building models to simulate India's future across sectors, such as transport, industries, buildings, agriculture, and forestry, to find interventions required to achieve a sustainable and secure future. Our work also involves the study of certain themes that cut across sectors (quality of life and development vs climate action, water and land demands for agriculture vs power, etc).
CSTEP's SAFARI model: Balancing development with climate action requires a good understanding of the interactions between sectors, natural resource systems, and environmental externalities. The Climate Change Mitigation at CSTEP has undertaken a modelling study with the aim to provide such an understanding and help create scenarios for low-carbon development through the use of an interactive simulation tool called Sustainable Alternative Futures for India (SAFARI). You can access the tool here.
SAFARI estimates the energy, emissions, and resources implications of achieving developmental goals such as food, housing, healthcare, education, power for all, and transport up to 2050. The user interface allows you to explore these implications as well as the trade-offs between them. Using SAFARI, you can create integrated scenarios across sectors and test out the impact of policy choices on energy, emissions, and resources. Ultimately, we hope that this tool can be used to provide insights into developing and tracking India's long-term strategy (LTS) in line with the Paris Agreement. For more information, please contact safari@cstep.in
PRESS RELEASE: Bengaluru has the potential to reduce PM10 emissions by 21% by 2024, says CSTEP study
The studies, “Emission Inventory and Pollution Reduction Strategies for Bengaluru” and “Identification of Polluting Sources for Bengaluru: Source Apportionment Study”, point to transportation and road dust as the biggest contributors to air pollution in Bengaluru city. These studies were conducted under the aegis of KSPCB and supported by The Bloomberg Philanthropies and Shakti Foundation, to generate scientific data and contribute to India’s National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).
PRESS RELEASE - CSTEP Study: Prepare for Warmer Temperature and High-Intensity Rainfall Events in Eastern India
A study by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP)—a Bangalore-based think tank—on the climate of eastern India underscores the need for climate risk mapping and climate action. The study ‘District-Level Changes in Climate: Historical Climate and Climate Change Projections for the Eastern States of India’ projects changes in temperature and rainfall patterns in Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal—the eastern states of India—over the next three decades compared to the historical period (1990–2019).
PRESS RELEASE: New report asks important questions as India develops net-zero strategy
As we inch closer to another global climate summit, COP27, climate projection models will once again be thrust into the limelight as they play an important role in devising net-zero strategies. However, assumptions and estimates for India’s ‘net zero by 2070’ target need to be reviewed carefully given the deep uncertainties involved. There is no correct pathway to net-zero emissions.
Sustainable Tomorrow: Ways to bridge the gaps in addressing India’s climate commitments
With India’s ambitious 2030 clean energy targets and the 2070 net-zero goal, more was expected from the Union Budget 2023-24 to increase the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) and solar photovoltaics (PVs). Currently, the EV market is struggling because of low penetration rates, and solar PVs have high production costs. Integrating EVs and solar PV systems could be a viable option for electric mobility in India, but without concessional financing available, the cost of solar projects would be too high, resulting in increased EV charging costs for consumers.
Biodiversity and Food Security: Two pieces of the same puzzle
India is highly dependent on the agriculture sector for its food security, and biodiversity loss leaves crops vulnerable to pests and diseases, thereby lowering yields. It also leads to the increased occurrence of invasive species and reduces the pollinator population. Thus, the interlinkage between food security and biodiversity loss needs to be understood in its entirety.
Revenue recycling: How governments can address carbon pricing trade-offs
While carbon taxes can disproportionately hurt the poor, governments can plough back some of this revenue to mitigate inequities, while incentivising low-carbon technological alternatives.
India's latest National Electricity Plan is ambitious and in line with climate commitments
At the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, India released its long-term low-carbon development strategies. Low-carbon development of India’s electricity systems is crucial because the power sector accounts for 45% of the country’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (based on emission estimates published by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change). The power sector is a key driver for decarbonising nearly all major energy-intensive sectors as it enables the shift to renewable energy-based electricity from the current fossil fuel–based processes.
Tackling technology transfer
Call for action on climate finance, international technology transfer, and capacity building is India’s central agenda at COP 27 and has been our focus at past COPs as well. So far, there is some information and discussion and certain action points on climate finance; however, there is little clarity with respect to technology transfer mechanisms and capacity building.
Can Relieving the Urban Fever Help Our Climate?
The embracing of rapid urbanisation for better lifestyles has led to mindless concretisation, proving to be one of the biggest threats to the outdoor temperature in cities.
Commonly known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, this localised phenomenon causes a rise in the land surface temperature (LST) as materials absorb and retain heat. This leads to a series of direct and indirect impacts on citizens, biodiversity, and emissions.