Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are mainly driven by population size, economic activity, lifestyle, energy use, landuse patterns, technology and climate policy (IPCC). As countries across the world take action towards a new international climate agreement,India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) includes reduction in the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33 to 35% by 2030 from 2005 levels, and creation of an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.

Everyone needs to contribute
The toolkit on Low Carbon Initiatives lays emphasis that each of us needs to play a strategic role to help the country achieve its targets. It seeks to demonstrate that simple individual actions when adopted can have a significant overall bearing. It arms trainers and users with a wide range of climate friendly examples and everyday actions, which when aggregated across a larger population will have significant impacts and contributions towards CO2 reduction for countries and communities to meet their intended target commitments. It also provides a quantitative estimation of the reduction in CO2 emissions at a micro-level and cost savings accrued by implementing the above-mentioned actions.

How to start?

  • Lighting:
    To start with, one can change their habits as far as the usage of lighting is concern. Change 5 lamps of your house with the energy efficient ones for starters. That will not only reduce the annual CO2 emission by 37 to 278 Kg. Not only that your annual electricity bill will also reduce upto Rs. 2000.
  • 5 star electrical appliances
    Refrigerators, air conditioner and fans are the part of our lifestyle now. Buying and using of BEE 5 Star electrical appliance would reduce the cost of electricity and increase the CO2 emission to a large extent.

  • Go Solar
    To save the environment we need to start opting for clean energy resources. Solar energy is one of them. You can now power your home using solar photo-voltaic energy. Also switch to solar inverter for your electricity requirements during power-cuts. These days solar water heater is also available in the market. If you install one at your home, it will surely save the energy and your money both.

Save Energy
There are few other things you can change in your daily routine to save energy.

  • Reset the temperature of your geyser. Usually geysers come with a preset temperature of 60 degree centigrade, but 40 degree centigrade is sufficient for a comfortable bath.
  • Also if you are two people at home, bathe in quick succession. Don’t keep the geyser on for longer than necessary.
  • Microwave has made our lives convenient, but don’t over use it. Due to our different lifestyle now most of the family members don’t eat food together, hence everyone use microwave to heat their own food. You can heat food at one go for unnecessary use of the microwave oven for just 5 mins a day.
  • Though many of us have semi-automatic or fully-automatic washing machine at home. But try to dry your clothes in the sun. Just one washload a week dried on a line instead of a dryer can make a difference.
  • Switch off all the appliances from a plug point and not with a remote.
  • Do an hour of yoga instead of running on a treadmill. This will not only improve your health but also will help in save the electricity.