While a part of the commitment made at COP-21 in 2015, countries started submitting BTRs only by 2024. File
India is in the final stages of preparing its first ever Biannual Transparency Report (BTR), part of its commitment as a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, Environment Ministry officials told The Hindu.
This report will be India’s official position on its greenhouse gas emissions inventory, key sectors and sources, and steps taken to improve energy efficiency use, as well as the transition to renewable energy sources and the availability of required resources.
While India has been periodically submitting such information in the form of ‘national communications’ and ‘Biannual Update Reports’ (BUR) – it submitted a BUR on December 30, 2024 – the BTR is a document that will be subject to technical review by independent, non-Indian, UNFCCC-accredited experts. The UNFCCC, or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is the core agreement on which rest commitments by countries to take climate action.
Subject to expert review
Historically, only developed countries have been required to submit BTRs, which are reviewed by accredited experts, including some Indians. The BTRs are part of the commitment made by all signatories at the UNFCCC’s 21st Conference of Parties (COP), held in Paris in 2015, to provide information on the climate action that they have taken, using a collectively agreed-upon format, in a bid to increase transparency. However, it was only at the 2024 COP in Baku that countries actually began submitting BTRs that adhered to the prescribed format. While all countries were to have submitted their BTRs by December 2024, several failed to meet that deadline, including India.
“The main feature of the upcoming BTR submission is that it will have data upto 2022. In the BUR, the data submitted reflected the emissions inventory of 2020. The other aspect is that this will be reviewed by an external set of experts,” a Ministry official, who declined to be identified, told The Hindu.
Post-COVID rise in emissions
In its latest BUR, India reported that in 2020, its total GHG emissions fell 7.93% from 2019. “One of the factors was a reduction in energy consumption due to COVID-19 inducted lockdowns. The forthcoming BTR is likely to show an increase in total emissions, just as is the trend in other countries. India’s share of emissions, however, continues to be 4% to 5% of the globe and, in per-capita terms, less than a third of global per-capita emissions,” the official added.
The preparation of such inventories is an elaborate process, involving multiple government and private research agencies. As of 2020, India’s emissions, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), stood at 2,959 million tonnes of CO2e. Including LULUCF, net emissions were at 2,437 million tonnes of CO2e.
The energy sector contributed the most to overall emissions (75.66%), followed by agriculture (13.72%), industrial processes and product use (8.06%), and waste (2.56%). In 2020, India’s forest and tree cover, along with other land use, sequestered approximately 522 million tonnes of CO2, equivalent to reducing 22% of the country’s total carbon dioxide emissions in 2020.
Published – February 18, 2025 09:13 pm IST