EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 92 of 120

Correct — C, (c) Both 1 and 2. Both numbered statements are elements of the Panchamrit, so the code that accepts both is the answer. Panchamrit — the word means five nectars, and is borrowed from the five-ingredient offering of Indian ritual — is the name the Prime Minister gave to a set of five climate commitments announced in India's national statement at the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held at Glasgow in November 2021. The five, in the order announced, are these: India will take its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts by 2030; India will meet 50 per cent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030; India will reduce the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes between then and 2030; India will reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45 per cent by 2030; and India will achieve net zero emissions by 2070. Statement 1 reproduces the first of those five and is correct. Statement 2 reproduces the second and is correct. Since both belong to the set, the code to choose is 'Both 1 and 2', printed as option (c). What gives the item its difficulty is that the five commitments use several different units — capacity in gigawatts, a share of requirement in per cent, an absolute quantity of emissions in tonnes, an intensity reduction in per cent, and a target year for net zero — and it is easy to attach the wrong number to the wrong measure. The two printed here are the two that both refer to 2030 and both concern energy, so a candidate who has learned the list as a blur will suspect that one of them has been altered. Neither has. One refinement worth carrying, because it explains an apparent discrepancy between sources. The Panchamrit statements were political announcements, and India's formal commitment under the Paris Agreement was updated afterwards: the updated Nationally Determined Contribution approved in August 2022 puts two of the five into treaty language, undertaking to reduce the emissions intensity of gross domestic product by 45 per cent from the 2005 level by 2030, and to achieve about 50 per cent of cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030. The formal text therefore speaks of installed power capacity where the Glasgow announcement spoke of energy requirements. The question asks what the Panchamrit says, and statement 2 quotes the Panchamrit as announced.

• (a)1 only — This code would mean that the 500 gigawatt non-fossil capacity target belongs to the Panchamrit while the 50 per cent renewable energy target does not. Both belong to it; the 50 per cent commitment was the second of the five announced at Glasgow, spoken immediately after the capacity target. A candidate might be drawn here by remembering that India's formal Nationally Determined Contribution expresses the 50 per cent figure as a share of installed electric power capacity rather than of energy requirements, and concluding that the statement as printed must be a distortion. That difference is between the announcement and the later treaty text, not between a real element and an invented one.
• (b)2 only — This code would accept the 50 per cent renewable target and reject the 500 gigawatt capacity target. The capacity target is in fact the first element of the Panchamrit and the most quoted of the five. The likely route to this error is confusing 500 gigawatts of non-fossil capacity with some other figure in the same field — India's installed capacity at the time, or a renewable-only sub-target — and deciding the statement has the wrong number. The figure is 500 gigawatts, the qualifier is non-fossil rather than renewable, and the year is 2030, exactly as printed.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — This code rejects both statements, which would require the Panchamrit to contain neither an energy capacity target nor a renewable share target. It contains both, as the first and second of its five elements. This is the option chosen by a candidate who does not recognise the term Panchamrit at all and treats an unfamiliar name as a sign that the whole item is a fabrication. The name is genuine, it belongs to the Glasgow statement of November 2021, and two of its five components are printed here unaltered.

The Panchamrit is India's headline climate position of the 2020s, and each of its five parts measures something different, which is why they must be learned separately rather than as a single slogan. Non-fossil energy capacity of 500 gigawatts by 2030 is a target for installed generating capacity from sources other than coal, oil and gas — so it counts nuclear and large hydro as well as solar and wind. Meeting 50 per cent of energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030 is a share target rather than an absolute one. Reducing total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030 is an absolute cut measured against a business-as-usual projection. Reducing the carbon intensity of the economy by 45 per cent means emissions per unit of gross domestic product, a relative measure that allows emissions to grow while the economy grows faster, and it is measured from a 2005 baseline. Net zero by 2070 is the long-horizon commitment, and it was the first time India had named a net-zero year at all. These sit within the architecture of the Paris Agreement of 2015, under which each country files a Nationally Determined Contribution and revises it upward over time; India filed its first in 2015 and an updated one in 2022 that carried two of the Panchamrit elements into formal commitments. The distinction between a political announcement and a filed contribution is what accounts for most of the confusion about the exact wording of these targets.

The environment and current-affairs strand of the EO/AO paper favours named initiatives with numbers attached, and climate commitments are the most reliably recurring of them. This item is set as a two-statement code question, the format that requires each statement to be judged on its own before the code is chosen — a candidate who is sure about one statement and unsure about the other still has a real decision to make. The habit rewarded is learning a named package as a numbered list with its units, its base year and its target year, because that is exactly the level of detail these questions probe. Note that this booklet prints a space before the question mark and before the colon, which is its style throughout.

• Panchamrit is the name given to five climate commitments announced by the Prime Minister at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021.
• Element one: non-fossil energy capacity of 500 gigawatts by 2030.
• Element two: meeting 50 per cent of energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030.
• Element three: reducing total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030.
• Element four: reducing the carbon intensity of the economy by 45 per cent by 2030.
• Element five: achieving net zero emissions by 2070 — India's first net-zero target year.
• COP26 was the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
• India's updated Nationally Determined Contribution, approved in August 2022, carried the 45 per cent emissions-intensity cut from a 2005 baseline and about 50 per cent non-fossil installed power capacity into formal commitments.

• Confusing non-fossil capacity, which includes nuclear and hydro, with renewable capacity alone.
• Attaching the wrong number to the wrong element — 500 gigawatts, 50 per cent, one billion tonnes, 45 per cent, 2070.
• Reading the later NDC wording about installed power capacity as evidence that the announced 50 per cent target is misquoted.
• Treating an unfamiliar Sanskrit name as a sign of a fabricated question and choosing the 'neither' code.

Climate commitments appear in EO/AO papers as two-statement code items like this one, as a direct question about a figure or a target year, or as a matching item pairing initiatives with the summits that launched them. Learn each named package as a numbered list with units and years attached, and note which international meeting announced it, since both halves are examinable.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The target year announced by India at COP26 for achieving net zero emissions is :

  • (a)2050
  • (b)2060
  • (c)2070
  • (d)2080

  Answer(c) 2070

• practice — not a real PYQ

  As part of the Panchamrit, India undertook to reduce the total projected carbon emissions by 2030 by :

  • (a)One hundred million tonnes
  • (b)Five hundred million tonnes
  • (c)One billion tonnes
  • (d)Two billion tonnes

  Answer(c) One billion tonnes