- Tuesday, March 11, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2070 could boost the country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) by 4.7 per cent by 2036 and create 15 million new jobs by the time the country turns 100 in 2047, a report by Asia Society Policy Institute, a New York-based think tank has said.
According to ThePrint, the report released on Friday (26) by the institute’s High-Level Policy Commission said that the said transition would require investments to the range of $10.1 trillion. The commission included the likes of former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, former United Nations general secretary Ban Ki-moon, Indian economist Dr Arvind Panagariya and Vivek Pathak, global head and director, climate business, International Finance Corporation.
The report also said that if India’s net-zero goal is brought forward to 2050, the annual GDP gains could go as high as 7.3 per cent in another decade. The findings came on the basis of modelling research by UK-based consultancy Cambridge Econometrics and US-based global research non-profit World Resources Institute.
“By meeting all of its 2030 commitments through various policy packages, India would be very well on its way to reach carbon neutrality by 2070 and decarbonize its economy substantially,” the report said.
The key report came ahead of the COP27 meeting which will be held in Egypt this November. There, talks over achieving global net-zero ambitions are likely to continue.
The issue was a major one at COP26 which was held in Scotland last year and where Indian prime minister Narendra Modi announced that the South Asian nation would reach net-zero emissions by 2070.
On Friday, India submitted its new set of climate goals to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and they include bringing down emissions intensity of GDP (the volume of carbon emissions per unit of GDP) by 45 per cent below 2005 levels and installing about 50 per cent electric-power capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030.
