Editorial 1: A climate change survival guide to act on
Context:
- This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the synthesis report of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) cycle, drawing together key findings from its six most recent reports. The report gains added legitimacy as its summary for policymakers is approved line-by-line by governments of the world. The United Nations Secretary General has called it a ‘survival guide for humanity’.
Some takeaways from the synthesis report:
- The report confirms that human activity is ‘unequivocally’ driving global temperature rise, which has reached approximately 1.1° C above pre-industrial levels. While the rate of emissions growth has slowed in the past decade, humanity is estimated to be on a 2.8° C(2.1°-3.4° C range) trajectory by 2100. This new realisation underpins the considerable attention in the IPCC report to trajectories that constrain global warming to 1.5° C rather than 2° C. This relative focus on 1.5° C has two implications.
1.The world’s ‘carbon budget’ running out
- First, the amount of carbon that the world can cumulatively emit before reaching key temperature limits is far lower for the 1.5° C than the 2° C target. It notes that the projected CO2 emissions over the lifetime of existing fossil fuel infrastructure without additional abatement already exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5° C.
- Striving for a 1.5° C target implies deep and immediate reductions in emissions in all sectors and regions, which makes more salient different national circumstances and questions of climate equity and operationalisation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC’s) core principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capabilities (CBDR- RC).
- The IPCC report points out that humanity had already consumed 4/5ths of its total carbon budget for 1.5° C by 2019, with developed economies consuming the lion’s share. The report also notes that existing modelling studies, which are often used to assess emission trajectories, do not explicitly account for questions of equity.
- While from an impact point of view, it is important to aspire to a 1.5°C target, the correspondingly lower carbon budget heightens questions of equity and who bears the responsibility for achieving these ambitious targets.
2.Need for early climate adaptation
- Second, the recognition of greater risks at lower temperatures points to the necessity of early climate adaptation. The report highlights that adaptation itself has limits, which implies that some losses and damages of climate change are inevitable.
- For example, the report finds that some coastal and polar ecosystems have already reached hard limits in their ability to adapt to a changing climate.
- The effectiveness of some of the adaptation options that are feasible and effective today (such as urban greening and restoration of wetlands) decreases with increasing warming.
- Importantly, the report cautions against certain forms of adaptation such as poorly planned seawalls — dubbed maladaptation — which can defer and intensify the impacts of climate for short term and often iniquitous adaptation gains.
- It also argues that at higher levels of warming, climate change could lead to cascading risks such as food insecurity, leading to migration, which are intensely challenging to manage.
The key prognosis:
- The leading message of the report is that of urgently adopting ‘climate-resilient development’ — a developmental model that integrates both adaptation and mitigation to advance sustainable development for all.
- The report assesses the plethora of technologies and design options, such as solar energy or electric vehicles, that can help countries reduce emissions or become more resilient today at low costs, and in a technically feasible manner.
- While a climate-resilient development pathway is the journey, the destination is net zero emissions at the global level. If sustained, net-zero GHG emissions will result in a gradual decline in global temperatures. However, this may be contingent upon significant carbon dioxide removals, which are challenging to achieve at scale.
Conclusion:
- The IPCC AR6 synthesis report is a landmark report because it offers a blueprint for sustainable development, while presenting a sobering account of present and future damages to ecosystems and the most vulnerable amongst us. It is now up to governments and people of the world to act.
Editorail 2: India’s push for semiconductors
Context:
- Union Government has disbursed around ₹1,645 crore in performance-linked incentives (PLI) scheme for electronics manufacturers so far, as part of its efforts to bring in more of the electronics supply chain to India.
About semiconductor chips:
- Semiconductors are materials which have a conductivity between conductors and insulators. They can be pure elements, silicon or germanium or compounds; gallium, arsenide or cadmium selenide.
- Significance of Semiconductor Chips lies in the fact that they are the basic building blocks that serve as the heart and brain of all modern electronics and information and communications technology products.
Why is the government encouraging semiconductor manufacturing?
- The push for semiconductors, or integrated circuits (ICs), is far more pressing now, as these chips are found in practically every modern electrical appliance and personal electronics devices.
- More and more nations are trying to turn away from China’s dominance in the space, following geopolitical pressures to de-leverage themselves from supply chain vulnerabilities.
- Semiconductor fabrication units, or fabs, turn raw elements such as silicon wafer into integrated circuits that are fit to be a part of practically all electronic hardware in the world.
- Fabs are highly capital-intensive undertakings, costing billions of dollars for large facilities. They also require highly reliable and high-quality supply of water, electricity, and insulation from the elements.
- The government’s Invest India agency estimates that electronics manufacturing as a whole will be worth $300 billion by the financial year 2025–26. While facilities for assembling finished products have been growing in number steadily, fabs for making chipsets and displays, which are crucial parts of the manufacturing process for many electronics, are rarer.
Can semiconductors and finished products both be made in India?
- India should lean on its strength in the electronics manufacturing value chain. So-called “foundry companies”, which turn silicon into semiconductors, require investments upwards of 35% of revenues, and entry costs run into billions of dollars.
- But companies that specialise in Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) are less expensive to set up, and generate better margins. The OSAT set-ups take care of the less capital-intensive parts of chipmaking, such as assembling the precise components that have already been manufactured, and running specialised tests to approve them.
- A large part of semiconductor manufacturing involves design and intellectual labour. India has an advantage here, as a large portion of semiconductor design engineers globally are either Indian or Indian-origin; chipmaking firms such as Intel and NVIDIA have large facilities in India that are already flush with Indian talent working on design problems. This is an advantage that China is losing control over in the face of sanctions and an ageing population.
Will India’s semiconductor ambition be limited?
- The opening of display and semiconductor fabs is one of the strategic and economic goals of India’s electronics manufacturing incentive programmes, and breaking new ground on ambitious plans connected to popular brands such as Apple is something that the Union government and States are equally eager to accomplish.
- Overall, the government appears to be developing the parts of the ecosystem that have promise for sustainable growth and fiscal feasibility.
Conclusion:
- Electronics value chain would have to be an international undertaking among nations with common values to be effective. If like-minded nations each specialise in different aspects of the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing process, and work together on assembly and distribution, that still solves the geopolitical problem of Chinese dominance without simply monopolising power with a different country.