India has been ranked 20th in the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2017, which underlined that countries like India are making “great efforts” in the fields of renewables and energy efficiency.

With the historic Paris Agreement having recently entered into force, the latest CCPI confirms a boost for renewable energy and positive developments in energy efficiency.

The publication was issued by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe.

While these encouraging trends are happening on a global scale, the necessary energy revolution is still happening too slowly, it said.

“Morocco (rank 8), this year’s host of COP22 continued its upward trend in the CCPI 2017. With massive investments in renewable energy and ambitious mid- and long-term targets, Morocco is a frontrunner in Africa.

“Positive trends are seen as well among emerging economies of the G20 like India (rank 20), Argentina (rank 36) and Brazil (40) which all improved their ranking in the CCPI 2017,” it said.

It said that some developing countries like Morocco, India and South Africa are starting to catch up and are already making great efforts in the fields of renewables and energy efficiency.

In terms of climate policy, it said that India, Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway and Germany managed to hold their positions.

“All countries are now expected to put forward national emissions reduction plans, and the G20 countries have to take a leading role in doing so by 2018.

“Although, India belongs to the ten largest CO2 emitting countries, per capita emissions are still relatively low, resulting in a good performance in this category,” it said.

National experts value that the Indian government runs one of the largest renewable capacity expansion programmes in the world, which leads to a good policy performance for the country, it said.

Canada (55), Australia (57) and Japan (60) are in the bottom group (rated “very poor”) of the index while Japan once again dropped two places as national experts criticize their government for a very poor climate policy.

The Climate Change Performance Index is an instrument designed to enhance transparency in international climate politics and aims to put political and social pressure on those countries which have, up until now, failed to take ambitious action on climate protection.

On the basis of standardised criteria, the index evaluates and compares the climate protection performance of 58 countries that together are responsible for about 90 per cent of global energy-related CO2 emissions.

Jan Burck, Germanwatch, key author of the CCPI comments said that the conditions for a global energy revolution have never been better.

“Due to the falling costs of renewable energy and efficiency technologies, national governments have no more excuses not to enshrine the Paris Agreement into national law.

“Besides the vast development of renewable energy, we see positive signals that fossil fuels increasingly are put on the defence. So far, falling oil prices did not cause an increase in demand for the energy source while a growing number of countries are starting to turn their backs on coal,” he said.