he heat wave in March this year that engulfed most of India and Pakistan took temperatures to a new high. In India, the highest temperatures in 122 years were recorded.

Heatwaves are not a new phenomenon but man-made climate change is making heatwaves longer, more extreme and more frequent. It is also causing more smog each winter.

Burning of fossil fuels is the fundamental cause of the increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that ultimately results in heatwaves and smog in South Asia.

One of the serious consequences of the record-breaking heatwaves is the enormous forest fires that are erupting more frequently across Pakistan.

India ranks third on the global list of greenhouse gas emitters. The country emits about three giga-tonnes of GHG each year. This is causing the Himalayan glaciers to retreat; threatening reliable flows in the Indus and Ganges, as well as their tributaries. The ever-increasing greenhouse gas emission have caused the global average temperature to rise by 0.8 °C between 1901 and 2021.

The International Energy Agency’s Clean Coal Centre (IEA-CCC) in a study released on February 13, 2021, says that coal-burning is responsible for high GHG emissions in India. The country uses almost a giga-tonne every year. This makes up 95 percent of coal consumption in all South Asian countries.

Scientific studies have established that 70 percent of the GHG emissions come from India’s power sector – mainly from coal power plants. Agriculture, industry and others contribute the rest.

The total installed capacity of India’s electric power generation system is 400,000 megawatts. 58 percent of this comes from coal.

India is ranked fourth in use of wind power, fifth in solar power and fourth in overall renewable power installed capacity. As of March 31, installed capacity of its wind energy plants is 46,723 MW and solar energy plants 109,885 MW.

In the month of February, a total of 133 billion units were generated. The share of coal-based electricity was 103 billion units. This makes it almost 78 percent of the total generation. The share of renewable power was 13 percent.

If India continues at the present rate, meeting all its electricity demand using renewable energy will take another 100 years. This is the reason India defended its use of coal-based power generation at the Glasgow climate summit.

While the global average varies between 10 and 20 percent, Indian coal has 30 to 45 percent ash. The heavy ash content causes larger emissions of SO2, NOx and particulate matter.

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based think-tank on climate change, has concluded that India’s coal-based power plants are way behind global standards in terms of efficiency and GHG emission. The study claimed that the average efficiency of the plants was 32.8 percent, one of the lowest among major coal-based power-producing countries.

CO₂ emissions are a function of the efficiency of a thermal power plant, which in turn depends on its size and age and the technology it uses. Nearly one percent of India’s power plants are ultra-supercritical; the rest are subcritical. India has the second-highest specific CO₂ emissions, standing at 983 g/kWh; 22 percent higher than the world’s lowest specific CO₂ emissions.

Indian coal also has a high ash content. While the global average varies between 10 and 20 percent, Indian coal has 30 to 45 percent ash. The heavy ash content results in greater emissions of SO₂, NO_x and particulate matter.

Coal-fired power plants are the biggest sources of fly ash which contains toxic chemicals. Coal ash-ponds of power plants cause flooding, smog and heatwaves.

Taking into account the hazards of coal-based power generation, in August 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres advised India to stop building coal-fired power stations before the end of the year 2020. India ignored the advice and has since added 5,500 megawatt of coal power plants. It also targets to increase its coal production to 1.2 billion tonnes by 2023-24. It is also overtaking China as the world’s largest emitter of anthropogenic sulfur dioxide.

With its increasing use of coal, India is set to become the world’s biggest polluter in the second half of this century. The international community has urged the Narendra Modi government to set a 2050 deadline for India’s emissions to reach net zero. India has been reluctant to accept the deadline.

India is currently the sixth-largest economy in the world. It has foreign reserves of about $600 billion. The electricity produced by coal-based power plants in India is 35 percent cheaper than that produced by renewables and 16 percent cheaper than domestic natural gas. On January 18, while addressing the World Economic Forum, the UN secretary-general stressed the phasing out of coal as a climate priority. This didn’t make any impact on India’s commitment to using coal as an engine of economic growth.

The worst impact of the Indian strategy is borne by Pakistan which is engulfed by severe heatwaves in summers and smog in winters. In 2020, Pakistan was ranked fifth in terms of climate change vulnerability.

Pakistan now faces extreme heatwaves, reaching a temperature in shade of 50 degrees Celsius and causing acute water shortages.

US President Joe Biden has said his country is committed to bringing down emission levels by 2030, reaching a 100 percent carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. The US Supreme Court has set standards to protect the states from the harmful air pollution by power plants elsewhere.

The writer is based in Islamabad. He can be reached at ahababsi@gmail.com