Five things you should know about net-zero emissions

By Vishnu Vardhan Reddy

Speaking at the 2021 COP26 climate change summit held in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised the global leaders as he stated that, “India will reach net-zero by 2070”.

Each country in this world today, has a responsibility to protect Earth from harmful gases that are omitted into the atmosphere and India being one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, achieving net-zero is a must.

So what exactly is a Net-zero emission?

To put it very simple, net-zero is nothing but maintaining a right balance between the amounts of greenhouse gases emitted and taken out from the atmosphere. To be more precise, if a country emits a certain amount of carbon every year, it has to balance through forest absorption or carbon capturing or buying carbon credits. A country can only achieve net zero, when removal and absorption of gases will be higher than that of total emissions.

Why is it important?

For the past many years, we have been working on the climate issues and change cannot be instant. Carbon dioxide is one of the major contributors to climate change and it stays in the atmosphere for years. So, reducing greenhouse gases is very important but this doesn’t bring net-zero. We have to try to regain the pre-climate global conditions for that we have to repair our past harm by planting more trees and tackling deforestation.

How important is it to stop usage of fossil fuels?

We have been so dependent on fossil fuels; coal, oil and gas but we have to rapidly turn towards renewable energy to avoid new emissions of greenhouse to achieve net-zero in a targeted period.

How many countries are committed to net-zero?

137 out of 192 countries are a part of UN Climate Convention and they represent 80% of the whole global emissions and they have committed to achieving net-zero in their provided targets. China is striving to achieve a net-zero target by 2060, Germany and Sweden by 2045, Iceland and Austria 2040; Finland 2035; and Uruguay 2030.

What net-zero has to do with Paris-agreement?

To avoid the worst climate change impact on the earth, Under the 2015 Paris agreement 192 countries of the World agreed to try to keep temperature rising below 1.5C.