FOSSIL FUEL CONSUMPTION, CARBON EMISSIONS AND TEMPERATURE VARIATION IN INDIA

Rise in temperature is a cause of major concern across the globe. Through this study an attempt is made to project the corresponding carbon dioxide emissions and temperature variation in India using Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average Model on past 44 years' data for predicting the future demand of petroleum oil, coal and natural gas in India. It is anticipated that the total demand for petroleum products will double by the year 2020 growing at a rate of 3.5 percent per year. The consumption of coal has witnessed an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent and the growth of natural gas is likely to be highest among all at 5.1 percent. In total, the fossil fuel consumption seems to grow at the rate of 4 percent per annum. This may cause the CO₂ level to rise to one and half times by the year 2020 in comparison to that of 2008 level thus causing an increase in the surface temperature by 0.0008 percent per annum. However, the level of carbon dioxide emission and the increase in temperature can be controlled by replacing the petroleum oil and coal consumption with natural gas.