We believe that the Copenhagen process is still incomplete; we strongly believe that the post-Kyoto agreement will come in Cancun. One of the impressions, which came out of the Copenhagen discussion, was that only a few countries would sit together and decide. I think this has created a bit of a misunderstanding among various peers. The best case is to bring back the focus to the Framework Commission on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and at the same time use the Major Economies Forums, and such other forums, to keep the process going. That is what we think will bring forward the Post-Kyoto agreement.
We do believe that the global agreement is absolutely necessary. At the same time, the global agreement does not mean that there is a similar rule for every participant; the principle of common benefits and responsibilities is already there which is agreed by all countries.
And so we do believe that it is absolutely important to have a global agreement and not fragmented agreements.

We are treating the problem of energy as a portfolio problem. In this portfolio it is very difficult to really make a “pick and choose”; what has happened among the new technologies is that in the last one and a half decades, we have been able to master wind technology, so I will not consider right now the technology on the table for new innovations, because it is already developed to some point by our peers in India. We have a really strong solar energy mission, which is also communicated as a part of our National Action Plan on Climate Change; in this mission we have raised our goal to 2020; we plan to have 20,000 megawatts of solar installed. So this would definitely require a lot more innovation and also the funding from the government of India. About 15 years back when the Indian budget was announced, the government had imposed one dollar for every ton of coal and this would generate about 500 million dollars in the coming year. That would be adequate just to push solar technologies.
Apart from that, India has signed a new agreement with the United States called the “123 Agreement”. This agreement is for the nuclear. Since it has not signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, India did not have access to the nuclear supply group with supplies in nuclear fuel. But this “123 Agreement” is giving us access to the nuclear fuel. And so, as a result, this is another technology, some new work of innovations would go on; in the initial years we do expect the technologies to come from the developed countries but the local innovations will go on. We will also be looking at the biomass technology and that is already on the table. We are especially looking at the biomass which can be grown in areas so that we do not have to deploy the agricultural land for growing the biomass for energy. And so this is another work, which is going on. These are some areas which we believe in the next decade would help us also in our drive towards low carbon or zero carbon energy forms.

In 2050, we believe that we will be in the 2 degrees centigrade mark. I think right now that most of the work that is happening in India is considering that there is an expectation target of 2 degrees centigrade; the Government of India and the Prime Minister of India have commented at the Major Economies Forum and also at Copenhagen that we are committed to that. We believe that governments will be able to achieve this. We assume that this would require an energy transition which need a different perception than conventional perceptions that are going on. The conventional perception is to fix this problem by the energy related technologies which are coming from the supply side. We are looking at the solutions which of course are there from the supply side but also strong solutions which are from the demand side. Especially of putting our economy on a different development path, a literally modern sustainability development path through the opportunities of building new infrastructures. We are a developing country; we are making room for transition over the next several decades to a more compared to the developed countries. The programs would be looking at how we make our infrastructures and the behavioural modifications of all people different than the way this transition is happening in developed countries. We strongly believe the possibility to reach the 2 degree centigrade target globally. India will be transitioning towards an economy where emissions would be significantly lower while reaching the level of the incomes which are similar to what the level of incomes are today in the developed countries.