A senior Indian negotiator at the ongoing U.N. climate summit (COP21) in Paris said that India will reduce its coal usage if the developed countries provide financial and technological support for its transition to renewable energy, according to BBC.
"We look forward to an agreement that enables financial support from the countries that have developed on the backs of cheap energy to those who have to meet their energy demands with more expensive but low carbon or zero carbon energy," said Ajay Mathur, according to Economic Times. Mathur is a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Council on Climate Change and director general of Bureau of Energy Efficiency.
"We have made it very clear that solar and wind are our first commitment. Hydro, nuclear - all of these non-carbon sources - are what we will develop to the largest extent that we can. What cannot be met by these will be met by coal," he added.
Negotiators from developed countries welcomed Mathur's statement saying that they support India's transition to renewable energy. "We support the notion of India greatly increasing [renewables]. Prime Minister Modi has made pledges that are quite enormously impressive actually with respect to the development of renewable energy, the total of what he has pledged is 175 gigawatts in a very short period," said Todd Stern, lead negotiator in the U.S. delegation, according to Ftc publications.
Mathur also rejected suggestions that India has adopted an obstructionist approach at the ongoing climate summit. "We are completely in favour of the agreement that helps create the kind of legal binding that is necessary for such an agreement to be actually implemented by countries - that is far more important than the countries just signing on it," he said, according to Times of India.
