There are two great things about the Mumbai Climate Action Plan which seeks to bring net zero carbon emissions for the city by 2050. One is that such an action plan has been created at all. The second thing is that it wants to implement it through public participation. This is the only way by which such a plan can be converted into tangible goals. That said, there are a few things that need attention.
There are conceptual issues involved in net zero emissions for a city. Suppose a city decides to go completely electric in its transportation and cooking and generates all the electricity needed at a pithead power plant 1,000 km away, which burns coal. Let’s say, further, that the city has plants that produce things like boilers that produce steam to power power-generating turbines, and coal will be needed to burn the boilers. Even if the city itself is largely emissions-free, it will still be at the center of a value chain that generates a lot of greenhouse gases.
This is where the Greenhouse Gas Protocol corporate standard provides assistance. It defines three ranges of emissions. Scope 1 covers emissions directly released by an entity. Scope 2 deals with the emissions generated in producing the energy used by the unit in question. Scope 3 emissions are about emissions being produced by the unit itself, even if the unit has zero Scope 1 emissions.
In the example above, a city that draws its power from a distant coal-fired plant has bad Scope 2 emissions. City production will generate emissions when it is used outside the city (coal-fired boilers). That is, the emission of Scope 3 will be more. Just because it has no direct production of greenhouse gas emissions, i.e. its scope 1 emissions are zero, doesn’t mean the city can lay claim to a clean green conscience.
To claim a realistic net zero, an entity would need to have a net zero in Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions. It is not clear whether the Mumbai Climate Action Plan is strictly planning for such an outcome.
It seeks to work across six verticals: energy and building, sustainable mobility, sustainable waste management, urban greening and biodiversity, air quality, urban flooding and water management. It is well thought out. But for any kind of stability it is necessary to prevent further congestion in the city. As India prospered, new jobs would be created in industry and services, not on agriculture, and this would lead to an urban population growth to such an extent that India would need thousands of square kilometers of additional urban space. India just needs new cities. Existing cities can be rebuilt to accommodate a few more people, but a city like Mumbai needs new satellite towns with rapid connectivity rather than hordes of new migrants into the existing location and infrastructure. This is not something a city can achieve on its own, it involves high-level center scope planning and action.
On the energy side, priority should be given to demand side management. Building design has received the attention it deserves to reduce energy demands. But urban planning is equally important to prevent the creation of heat islands, emphasized by the recently released second part of the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The city must hold off on outlaying its horses heavily on new solar parks and wind power farms. A revolution is underway in nuclear power: small modular reactors in fission energy and revolutionary advances in nuclear fusion. It is time for India to move from its pilot on thorium-based fast breeder reactors to regular, scale-up generation. Nuclear power is a stable, environmentally and climate-friendly form of electricity, free from the intermittent problem affecting wind and solar power. The mastery of fusion will pave the way for large-scale deliberate desalination of sea water, which will also reduce India’s water crisis to a great extent.
But a revolution in nuclear power may have come to fruition in the early 1930s. If the massive investment in attractive green energy sources at present is stopped, it will hamper the expected investment in new sources of energy. Yes, we are talking about Sunk-Cost Bias Distracting Rational Investment.
Mumbai’s climate action plan should activate other major cities to formulate their own action plans and for state governments and the Center to coordinate to harmonize them systematically. The city of Mumbai deserves congratulations from the rest of the country for this initiative.
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