Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar on Monday addressed the audience at the 14th Conference of Parties (COP 14) Summit held in Greater Noida and reported that India has already reached half of its target of 175 GW for the production of renewable energy. The plan of the government is to achieve a renewable energy capacity of 175 GW by the year 2022 as part of its climate commitments. While discussing the progress so far, Javadekar shared that India was halfway there with around 80 gigawatts of renewable energy. "The world did not believe it when we announced our renewable energy target of 175 GW, which will be 40 per cent of our total energy capacity. However, we have already achieved half of our target," Javadekar said.

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Prakash Javadekar Talks About Sustainable Development

"We are a party to the Paris Agreement. The commitment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, towards sustainable development, is full and complete. He also played a leading road at the Paris summit," Javadekar shared at the COP 14 Summit. He then went on to talk about how the Modi government has levied a tax of USD 6 on the production of coal which hasn't been done by any country. Union Minister also said that they have promoted e-vehicles by offering various concessions on taxes and has set up a water resource ministry which was used to tackle desertification in Kutch. Green cover in India was 24% but in the last five years, 15,000 square km of green cover has increased and the government is inching towards its target of 33% afforestation.

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14th Conference of Parties (COP 14)

The COP 14 to United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is a Summit to discuss the ways of combating the threats to the climate. The UNCCDCOP14 event was attended by more than 200 countries, 100 Ministers and more than 8000 participants. The Summit was held at Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh where countries voiced their concerns about the climate and environment. UNCCD was adopted in Paris on June 17, 1994, by 196 countries with India being ratified in the Convention in 1996.

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(with ANI inputs)