India has been ranked 20th in the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2017.
This index underlines that countries like India are making “great efforts” in the fields of renewables and energy efficiency.
The Climate Change Performance Index is an instrument supposed to enhance transparency in international climate politics.
Its aim is to encourage political and social pressure on those countries which have, up to now, failed to take ambitious actions on climate protection as well as to highlight countries with best-practice climate policies.
On the basis of standardised criteria, the index evaluates and compares the climate protection performance of 58 countries that are, together, responsible for more than 90 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions.
80 percent of the evaluation is based on objective indicators of emissions trend and emissions level. 20 percent of the index results are built upon national and international climate policy assessments by about 300 experts from the respective countries.
With the historic Paris Agreement having recently entered into force, the latest CCPI confirms a boost for renewable energy and positive developments in energy efficiency.
The publication was issued by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe. While these encouraging trends are happening on a global scale, the necessary energy revolution is still happening too slowly.
Morocco (rank 8), this year’s host of COP22 continued its upward trend in the CCPI 2017. With massive investments in renewable energy and ambitious mid- and long-term targets, Morocco is a frontrunner in Africa.
Positive trends are seen as well among emerging economies of the G20 like India (rank 20), Argentina (rank 36) and Brazil (40) which all improved their ranking in the CCPI 2017.
In terms of climate policy, India, Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway and Germany managed to hold their positions.
All countries are now expected to put forward national emissions reduction plans, and the G20 countries have to take a leading role in doing so by 2018.
Although, India belongs to the ten largest CO2 emitting countries, per capita emissions are still relatively low, resulting in a good performance in this category.
National experts value that the Indian government runs one of the largest renewable capacity expansion programmes in the world, which leads to a good policy performance for the country.
Canada (55), Australia (57) and Japan (60) are in the bottom group (rated “very poor”) of the index while Japan once again dropped two places as national experts criticize their government for a very poor climate policy.