Tamil Nadu’s electricity demand is expected to increase year on year, and so are the sector’s absolute carbon dioxide emissions. Considering India’s commitments under the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention, and the recent announcement of targeting net zero carbon by 2070, Tamil Nadu will require a long-term strategy to reduce its emissions. This may start with establishing sector-specific emission inventories, followed by sector-specific emission target setting.

The power sector is deemed to be one of the sectors easiest to decarbonise. One of the first steps for putting in place a decarbonisation strategy is target setting. This report assumes a net-zero carbon target for the Tamil Nadu power sector by 2050. It applies the Sectoral Decarbonisation Approach (SDA) of the Science Based Target (SBT) model to simulate decarbonisation pathways that are in line with the goals of the Paris agreement – limiting global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels (ETP B2DS) and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C (SBT 1.5°C) respectively.

In this paper, we undertake the following steps:

1) Projecting the electricity generation for the upcoming years along with the corresponding emissions.

2) Setting targets for the emissions based on the Science Based Targets (SBT).

3) Comparing various scenario planning models for decarbonising the electricity sector of Tamil Nadu.