Improved Electricity Access in India Has Little Impact on Carbon Emissions and Climate Change

It turns out that improving access to electricity won't up a nation's total carbon emissions growth to a large extent. Scientists have found that improving household electricity access in India over the last 30 years only contributed marginally to carbon emissions growth during that time.

"Energy access is fundamental to development: it brings improvements to all aspects of life, including education, communication and health," said Shonali Pachauri, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This study shows that the climate impacts of expanding access are in fact very small."

In this case, the scientists used India as a case study while the country developed. India still lacks electricity access for much of its population, about 400 million people. Yet this is still a huge increase in access when compared to 30 years ago. In fact, from 1981 to 2011, household electricity access in the country improved from around 25 percent to between 67 to 74 percent of the population, which is an increase of about 650 million people.

"India is at a similar stage to many other developing countries in terms of energy access," said Pachauri. "So we believe that these findings will be applicable on a broad scale to other developing countries."

In fact, the scientists found that improved electricity access only account for a three to four percent rise in the national CO2 emissions. This, in particular, shows that increasing access isn't going to add much in the way to the CO2 emissions of the country. That said, low-carbon energy sources have benefits for developing countries and should be encouraged.

"Low-carbon energy sources bring improved health, efficiency and can also bring benefits to the economy and employment," said Pachauri. "And if international climate policies are introduced later, more investment in low-carbon energy sources would mean that developing countries are not locked-in to fossil fuel power and higher costs in the future."

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.