India has yet again publicly stated its opposition to targets that limit carbon dioxide emissions – even as it continues to push a domestic clean energy agenda.

“It is not true that India is running away from mitigation,” said Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, on Sunday, during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s three-day tour of the country. “India’s position, let me be clear, is that we are simply not in the position to take legally binding emissions targets.” (Washington Post).

Later, in a closed-door meeting with Clinton, Ramesh repeated his position: “There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions.” (AP) India’s per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are some 17 times lower than that of the US (pictured, extracted from EIA’s May 2009 International Energy Outlook).

Ramesh added that India also faced the threat of carbon tariffs imposed on its exports to countries such as the US – under a provision inserted into the Waxman-Markey energy bill being debated in the Senate.

Although it seemingly objects to the politics of climate talks, India has developed an ambitious climate agenda domestically (see Developing nations tackle climate, Nature 460 158-159; 2009).

The centrepiece of the plan, currently being finalized, is a programme that could produce upward of 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2020, some 6–7% of the nation’s projected power at that time, says Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Pachauri has said there is a “disconnect” between India’s position on climate at home and abroad. “I’m talking as an Indian and not as chairman of the IPCC, but I suspect by the time we go to Copenhagen, we will be more in line with our domestic and international positions,” he told Nature earlier this month.

At least Clinton found cooperation on nuclear ties between India and the US: she said on Monday that India had designated two sites on which US companies would have exclusive rights to sell civilian nuclear power reactors, and agreed to a deal ensuring that technology in US defence items purchased by India was not passed onto third countries (AP).