Government’s interim report on low carbon economy fails to set a clear vision for country, said Greenpeace India. “The interim report is an incomplete first step. Not only does the interim report ignore renewable energy but also credits coal and nuclear energy as low carbon. The interim report is highly unsatisfactory from the options it lays out,” said Siddharth Pathak, policy officer of Greenpeace India.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh along with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of planning commission released the Kirit Parikh interim report in New Delhi on Monday. It proposed diesel cars and sports utility vehicles should carry a higher tax. The report also gives suggestions for adoption of a low carbon pathway in the 12th five year plan (2012-17).

Greenpeace also recommended ‘increasing the renewable energy portfolio in India to further push up the carbon intensity target along with clearly identifying the financial and technological barriers to low carbon growth.’

“The low carbon report does not address the issue of financing low carbon growth and how to remove barriers around financing low carbon growth,” Greenpeace said.

In a briefing paper on the growth of the telecom sector, Greenpeace said, “It grows at the cost of the climate, powered by an unsustainable and inefficient model of energy generation and usage.”

The environmental NGO said that the mobile towers heavily rely on diesel gen-sets to power their network operations. “The consumption of diesel by the telecom sector currently is more than 2 billion litres annually, second only to the railways in India by 2007,” it said.

“These trends present a significant challenge to the economic sustainability and growth of the sector’s business model,” the green NGO said.

According to the government data the Indian telecommunications industry is one of the fastest growing in the world and India is projected to become the second largest telecom market globally by 2011-2012 with a gross revenue exceeding Rs. 1,580 billion.