Himal Southasian
By: Ananth Chikkatur & Sunita Dubey
"With Coal, we have light, strength, power, wealth, and civilization,”
W J Nicolls, a 20th-century American writer, once marvelled. “Without
Coal we have darkness, weakness, poverty, and barbarism.” A century
later, civilisation itself seems to be threatened by the ‘black
diamond’. Although breathing coal’s sulphurous smoke was once
considered healthy in England, it soon became clear that inhaling these
vapours was far from good for the human body. Moreover, it is not just
the coal fumes that are dangerous to human health. It is the invisible,
odourless carbon-dioxide (CO2) gas that results from burning coal that
is now threatening the world – not just human beings, but the entire
climatic system.
Coal, whose reserves are widespread across
the globe, today provides about 40 percent of the globe’s electricity,
but it has also become something of a black albatross. Similarly,
refined crude oil has given us diesel and gasoline – the most
energy-dense of liquid fuels – giving humanity the freedom to drive and
fly across the globe. Yet, it has become increasingly obvious that our
collective addiction to oil has become a geopolitical and environmental
nightmare. While fossil fuels have irrefutably defined the modern way
of life, countries around the world are now struggling to maintain a
certain lifestyle – one made possible by fossil fuels – while not
relying on the dirty sources.
Southasia has been no different than the
rest of the world in imbibing the fossil-fuel-driven benefits.
Commercial coal mining in India began in 1774, led by the British, and
the coal-powered railway system built in the region during the colonial
era transported goods, people and dreams. The British brought along
automobiles with the railways, and Indians quickly fell in love with
them in spite of the poor road infrastructure. Although today more
Southasians have two-wheelers than cars, the new Tata Nano offers the
possibility of making the car more affordable than ever. Yet
industrial-scale environmental problems are becoming increasingly
apparent to all. Jharkhandis are revolting against the continued coal
mining, which has given them little more than lost livelihoods and
destroyed forests; dense smog perennially envelopes the Indian capital;
children breathe diesel smoke and dust in all large Southasian cities;
rapidly receding snowlines are threatening the lives of the hundreds of
millions who depend on glacial runoff; and a rising sea is likely to
submerge large tracts of Bangladesh.
One of the most significant problems today
is the continued reliance on dirty coal-fired power plants, which
dominate the Indian power sector. Direct impacts resulting from the
construction and ongoing operation of coal power plants include
emissions of particulates and hazardous chemicals, pollution of local
waterways, and degradation of land used for storing the by-product of
burned coal, known as fly ash. The indirect impacts result mainly from
coal mining, which includes degradation and destruction of land, water,
forests, habitats and societies in general.
Although there are air-pollution
regulations in most of the countries of Southasia, the enforcement of
these regulations remains problematic. For Indian coal plants, the
emphasis has mainly been on particulate emissions. While assessment of
environmental impacts and routine monitoring are expected of all power
stations, there is little penalty for violating the stated norms. There
are provisions in the law that allow for power plants to be closed down
for not meeting environmental standards; but such plants have never
been shuttered because, as the Central Electricity Authority notes,
India “can hardly afford to close any unit in the power starved
situation”.
In addition to air pollution, water quality and quantity is under
serious duress, both locally and across national borders, and these
issues are likewise negatively impacted by the continued dominance of
coal. The total industrial water use in India is currently said to
account for roughly 13 percent of the total freshwater ‘withdrawal’ in
the country; and thermal power plants (which include coal) are some of
the country’s highest industrial consumers of water, even as compared
to their global counterparts. On average, for every 1000 kilowatt-hours
(Kwh) of power, Indian thermal power plants consume as much as 80 cubic
metres of water – compared to less than 10 cubic metres consumed by
such plants in developed countries. As supply problems increase,
estimates by the International Water Management Institute, based in Sri
Lanka, indicate that India will enter a ‘stress zone’ by 2025, and
Pakistan and Sri Lanka shortly thereafter. Water scarcity due to
groundwater depletion is already a major problem in India.
This region, like the world in general, is
quite literally being consumed by its insatiable desire for the energy
required for accelerating economic growth. Meanwhile, our political
leaders are unwilling to make the difficult, but necessary, changes; as
such, politics continues to trump the environment, and economic growth
remains king. At the same time, those who fervently demand that an
economic system completely addicted to fossil fuels simply quit do not
take economics and institutional inertia into account when promoting
currently expensive technologies such as solar photovoltaic (PV) panels
or wind turbines. As a result, even while politicians struggle to
maintain the status quo in the midst of impending environmental crises,
environmentalists, with few exceptions, seem to be holding little sway
in Southasian policy debates.
Yet procuring an energy-secure future for
Southasia will involve not only the ability to get access to energy
resources. It will also require dealing with a whole spectrum of
increasingly pressing environmental and ecological issues, including
deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, air and water pollution,
carbon emissions, water shortages in cities, and the impacts of climate
change such as unpredictable monsoons, severe tropical storms, droughts
and floods. Taking on such a range of issues will clearly require input
from the full spectrum of stakeholders, large and small.
Red herring of consumption
In general, as countries become richer,
energy consumption per capita rises correspondingly, to satisfy
increasing demand for energy services from both the industrialisation
process and rising living standards. Although there is no fixed or
causal relationship, there is a broad correlation between the Human
Development Index (HDI) and per-capita energy consumption across
countries (see Figure 1). This correlation does not mean that higher
energy consumption necessarily adds to human development, but rather
that the availability of energy services is an important ingredient for
advancing many aspects of human development.
More to the point, as Figure 1 again
indicates, it is only for countries with energy consumption below one
tonne of oil equivalent (toe) that increased energy consumption offers
the possibility of higher development gains. Most developing countries,
including all Southasian countries, have very low per-capita energy
consumption, and their level of economic and human development is
likewise quite low. Hence, it is an inescapable conclusion that, as
part of its development process, Southasian energy consumption would
have to rise.
That is not the whole story, however. As also indicated by Figure 1,
beyond a certain threshold point, increases in energy consumption
clearly do not lead to higher levels of human development. In other
words, increased energy consumption is good for development, but only
up to a certain point. For example, there is an entire range of
countries, from Hong Kong to Ireland, that have HDI levels above 0.9,
but whose energy consumption only ranges from 2.5 to around 4 toe per
capita. Clearly, it is possible to reach a ‘developed’ status without
consuming energy at the level of the United States, Canada or
Luxembourg. In fact, many highly industrialised countries are quire
energy inefficient – ie, their high energy consumption is not resulting
in increases in human development. Hence, as Southasia aims for its
citizens to achieve better standards of living, its policymakers would
do well to follow examples of countries such as Japan, which is much
more energy efficient than the US.
A related but important point is that
energy consumption by itself also does not increase a country’s gross
domestic product in a uniform manner. Figure 2 shows how GDP per capita
increases with higher per-capita consumption. In general, GDP does
increase with rising energy use but, again, only up to a point. As with
HDI, there are several countries with high energy consumption and low
GDP (of around USD 15,000 per capita); there are also countries with a
wide range of energy consumption, yet whose GDP are all above USD
30,000. The ratio of energy use to GDP is called ‘energy intensity’,
and it is an important metric in discussions regarding energy policy.
The lower the energy intensity, the better for any country, as this
indicates that more economic growth is being achieved with smaller
inputs of energy – more bucks for the bang, so to speak. Projections of
future growth
in energy depend critically on assumptions related to
energy intensity.
India is the dominant energy consumer and
producer in the region, and its energy-consumption patterns in the
future matter significantly in terms of how the region as a whole will
cope with its energy requirements. Yet despite being the regional
energy giant, total Indian energy usage is quite small compared to
China and the US. Respectively, these two consume about three and 4.5
times as much total energy (including biomass, hydropower, etc) as does
India. So, in spite of the juxtaposition of China and India in many
debates – for instance, in terms of oil consumption and climate change
– the latter actually has a significantly smaller footprint than does
China.
This is true even in terms of per-capita
energy consumption – India has a low 0.5 toe per capita, whereas
China’s is 1.3 toe, in spite of both countries having similar sized
populations (see Table 1). In general, Southasian countries consume
about four to eight times less energy per capita than does the US.
Bangladesh has the lowest per-capita energy consumption in Southasia;
whereas India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan all have similar consumption
rates of about a half-tonne of oil equivalent per person per year.
Although the energy consumption per capita
of a country is, on one level, closely linked with its level of
economic development, energy use in developing countries has generally
been growing faster than in industrialised countries. According to the
International Energy Agency (IEA), in terms of total energy
consumption, China and India have each experienced a roughly threefold
increase since the 1970s. Despite the opportunities held out by
increased energy efficiency, there is little doubt that developing
countries will need to further increase their total energy consumption
to meet their development aspirations. The IEA estimates that global
energy demand will grow by almost 60 percent by 2030, and more than
two-thirds of this growth will be due to increased demand in developing
countries, especially India and China. Nonetheless, even with this
enormous growth, by the end of the next two decades developing
countries will still likely be consuming only about one-fifth as much
as many developed countries on a per-capita basis.
Biomass injustice
The low per-capita energy consumption in
Southasia is primarily due to the fact that a vast majority of the
populace does not have access to modern energy sources. Indeed, the
region has the largest number of people without electricity relative to
the rest of the world (see Figure 3). Nearly one in two Indians does
not have access to electricity – a jarring contrast to the ‘Shining
India’ and ‘World is Flat’ rhetoric. In fact, in Southasian and
Sub-Saharan countries, the ‘energy poverty’ – the inability of their
people to access sufficient energy – is one of the reasons for the low
levels of development in these regions, as energy depravation has
significant health, social, environmental and economic implications.
Energy supply in Southasian countries has been driven by available
indigenous resources, as well as by their individual historical paths.
Table 2 provides a window onto the Southasian energy scene, as of 2006.
Clearly, all of the region’s countries continue to depend heavily on
biomass (organic matter such as wood, dung and agricultural waste),
which has severe consequences, as discussed below. In India and
Pakistan, roughly a third of the population relies on biomass, and this
jumps to 86 percent in Nepal and 70 percent in Burma. The figure for
Sri Lanka is 53 percent. Most of the biomass use is in the household
sector, and not in the industrial sector. In terms of commercial fuels,
more than 90 percent of Southasian commercial energy consumption is
based on fossil fuels. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have some
indigenous fossil-fuel resources (coal, oil and gas), and they are
being produced to meet demand. On the other hand, smaller countries
such as Nepal and Sri Lanka have no domestic fossil fuel resources, and
depend heavily on imported diesel, gasoline and kerosene. These
countries do, however,
have significant water resources for hydropower, as discussed later.
Throughout the region, most of the energy
poor rely on biomass-based fuels, an energy source that comes with its
own unique problems. Wood-based stoves (chulas), for instance, are
highly inefficient, in addition to being a major source of hazardous
chemicals and particulates. Indeed, the World Health Organisation has
estimated that indoor air pollution from traditional fuel use in poor
households is the sixth-largest health-risk factor in developing
countries, accounting for an estimated 1.6 million premature deaths
every year. In many ways, indoor smoke inhalation is worse than outdoor
urban air pollution, even though the latter issue gets far more policy
attention.
The collection of biofuels is also
enormously time consuming, and is primarily performed by women and
children. Given that the use of wood in traditional cookstoves is very
inefficient, large quantities of it need to be collected every day. For
example, the World Bank estimates that Nepali women in hilly areas
spend more than an hour every day gathering wood; and in areas where
wood is scarce, they spend upwards of two and a half hours. The
ramifications of this are far-ranging. Children who are condemned to
spend hours collecting biomass to support their families often have
neither the time nor the energy for education, thus stunting their
future possibilities. Women are particularly vulnerable to energy
scarcity and environmental damages, thus making the problem not just
one of energy economics or technology, but also of social justice.
Finally, use of biomass in rural areas
strongly affects the environment. Collection of firewood involves not
just the gathering of small twigs and branches, but also cutting down
trees, first in local areas and then later in areas farther away. Such
denuding of forests is exacerbated under drought conditions. In
addition, the large quantities of soot produced by burning of wood have
proven adverse effects on climate change. Finally, the use of crop
residue and dung for fuel eliminates an important source of nutrients
for the soil in societies that rely on agriculture.
When all of these factors are taken
together, it is quite obvious that a major challenge in Southasia is
ensuring that its large population of energy-deprived masses gets
access to clean and affordable energy sources. These need to include
electricity, LPG for cooking, and access to mass or personal motorised
transport. While the affordability of these cleaner fuels is an issue,
without modern distribution systems in rural areas, households cannot
access modern fuels even if they can afford them. Thus, efforts to
bring improved energy services to the poor have to contend not only
with enhancing the supply, but also with setting up programmes and
policies that account for the relevant economic, financial, cultural
and institutional contexts.
Population and migration
The debate on whether there is an ongoing
process of human-induced climate change is finally over, and it is now
almost universally accepted that global warming is driven by the
accumulation in the atmosphere of heat-trapping (‘greenhouse’) gases
resulting from human activities. Carbon dioxide, mostly the product of
the combustion of fossil fuels for energy use, is the single largest
contributor to the problem. Thus, the climate issue is intimately
linked to the use of fossil fuels in the energy sector. The recent data
indicates that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now exceed 380 parts per
million (ppm) by volume, a significant rise from the pre-industrial
concentration of about 280 ppm. (Other greenhouse gases have also shown
significant increases in atmospheric concentrations.)
There are many likely impacts of climate change, and rising global
average temperature is just one predictable outcome. There are also a
wide range of ‘unknowns’. According to the UN’s 2007-08 Human
Development Report, the uncertain but significant risks of catastrophic
outcomes are part of the emerging climate-change scenario. Recent
models provide evidence pointing to processes that could “increase the
vulnerability of the ice-sheets to warming”. Exceeding the two-degree
threshold would fundamentally change the distribution of the world’s
water resources. Accelerated glacial melt in the Himalaya will compound
already-severe ecological problems across northern China, India,
Pakistan and Nepal, which will ultimately reduce the flow of water to
major river systems, also affecting vital irrigation. Indeed, the
mighty Himalaya might lose much of the very hima (snow) from which its
name is derived – an evolution that would dramatically alter the region
forever.
The impact of climate change on water and
other natural resources, crop yields, inundation by the sea and the
direct consequences on human health, will also exacerbate existing
social and environmental problems, and lead to increased migration
within and across national borders. Scientists in India have warned
that climate change could trigger the mass migration of individuals and
their families, primarily because of livelihood loss but also because
of direct loss of land and homes as sea-level rise inundates or
destabilises coastal regions. Several scientists have challenged the
IPCC’s projections of about a half-metre of sea-level rise by the end
of the century as an underestimate, on account of its omission of any
effect of ice-sheet dynamics. More realistic assessments, which take
into account current understandings of business-as-usual conditions,
suggest that a three-to-five metre rise in sea levels is not out of the
question with a four-to-five degree rise in average global
temperatures, which will hasten the break-up of ice sheets in Greenland
and Antarctica. In the worst-case scenario, a five-metre sea-level rise
would create about 125 million ‘climate migrants’ in Southasia alone,
and they would have little or no legal standing under current
international law as they cross international borders for sheer
survival. In fact, the projected 75 million or so displaced from
Bangladesh would be especially vulnerable, even as their entire nation
state would face the challenge of land inundation and economic collapse.
In general, the impacts of climate change
in developing countries are far more severe than the developed
countries. For example, monsoon floods and storms in Southasia during
the 2007 season displaced more than 14 million people in India and
seven million in Bangladesh. Over 1000 people lost their lives across
Bangladesh, India, southern Nepal and Pakistan. Even reported economic
losses paint a distorted picture. While over 98 percent of people
living in developing countries are affected by climate disasters,
calculated economic impacts are skewed towards rich countries. The
reason for this is that costs are assessed on the basis of property
values and insured losses, which have been rising steeply. All eight of
the climate disasters registering more than USD 10 billion in economic
damages reported since 2000 took place in rich countries, six of them
in the United States. Meanwhile, damages from disasters in developing
countries are often not recorded accurately, simply because most people
affected do not own properties or have insurance.
Southasia, already one of the most densely
populated areas in the world, is also home to some of the
fastest-growing cities in the world. The World Bank projects that by
2020, Bombay will be the second-largest city globally, closely followed
by Delhi and Dhaka. With the addition of Karachi and Calcutta, five of
the world’s 11 megacities will be on the Subcontinent. Any risk
associated with climate change will thus put huge populations at risk,
in both urban and rural areas. And as estimated by the World Bank, by
2050 the Southasian population is likely to exceed 2.2 billion, from
the current level of 1.5 billion. With an estimated 600 million people
subsisting on less than USD 1.25 a day in the region, even small
climate shocks could cause irreversible losses, and tip a large number
of people into destitution.
As per the World Bank, about 70 percent of
Southasians live in rural areas and account for about 75 percent of the
poor. Most of the rural poor depend on agriculture for their
livelihoods. With their rural economies closely tied to
climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture and fisheries, the poor
are likely to be disproportionately affected by climate change. People
living in poverty are more likely to live in unplanned, temporary
settlements erected on unsuitable land – those most prone to the risks
of flooding, storm surges and landslides. They lack sanitation, and
their limited access to clean water, poor diet and inadequate
health-care provision undermine their resistance to infectious
diseases.
Population also plays a critical role in determining the impact of
energy consumption. Higher populations in regions with high affluence
and poor technologies inherently result in the greatest environmental
impact. According to Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton
Environmental Institute, the world’s richest half-billion people –
about seven percent of the global population – are responsible for 50
percent of the world’s carbon-dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, the poorest
50 percent are responsible for just seven percent of emissions. Hence,
the large population in the US causes more damage than does a
similar-sized population in Southasia. Although there was a significant
amount of effort put towards controlling population growth during the
1970s and 1980s, there is very little political appetite for it today,
especially since population growth rates in many parts of the world
have declined rapidly. Yet compared to China, Japan and much of Europe,
the Southasian population is still expected to grow in the near future,
as fertility rates remain above two per family in most countries of the
region (see Table 3, Figure 4).
In general, of course, the relationship
between climate change and population growth is not simple. The growth
of greenhouse-gas emissions is responsive to a wide range of factors
beyond population growth, including the energy-intensive consumption
patterns in industrialised countries, economic growth, technological
change and changes in land use. Other demographic factors, such as
urbanisation and aging, are also important. Even though the per-capita
emissions of Southasian countries are lower than those of many
industrialised countries, a large population base has a critical impact
on the warming of the environment – local and global – especially when
these countries begin to industrialise further. While technology and
energy conservation can alleviate greenhouse-gas emissions, growing
populations as well as growing affluence are likely to negate these improvements.
It is just not the population growth, but
the high population densities, that are of particular concern in
Southasia. Throughout the region, the person-to-land ratio is among the
highest in the world, particularly in the rural areas. Given that the
Subcontinent is susceptible to environmental risk due to its current
development path and impacts of climate change, population growth will
not only increase the numbers of the vulnerable. It will also
contribute additional stress to resources, especially water, land and
forests. Yet, perhaps ironically, it is only human ingenuity that can
help us in tackling the climate-change challenge. In this, the
Southasian population will play a critical role in the future because
of its large size, as well as in how it reacts to upcoming
environmental changes.
Beyond piecemeal policies
The energy sector in Southasia faces a
number of challenges, and climate change is only one of them. Meeting
these challenges simultaneously will be a complex task, and one that
will require an integrated approach to energy policy. But such an
approach, including assessing the challenges of climate-change
mitigation and adaptation, has yet to begin on any serious level in the
region. Indeed, these kinds of studies are only now being undertaken
even in the US and Europe.
In Southasian countries, meanwhile, the
enormous breadth of the energy sector has often led to a piecemeal
approach. This will only make the eventual task of integration that
much more arduous. In India, for instance, at the central level in New
Delhi every major energy resource currently has its own ministry, and
power and environmental issues are covered by separate ministries;
furthermore, climate-change issues and negotiations are often directed
out of the prime minister’s office. These departments are often at odds
with each other, and it has proven difficult to get any integrated
planning process initiated in the government. The highly touted
Integrated Energy Policy document, released by the Indian Planning
Commission in 2006, has been
only marginally successful, and even it did not include any serious proposal on how the country’s energy needs
would be met while mitigating environmental and climate-change impacts.
The need to increase energy supply has
always been a high priority in Southasian energy policies, which have
particularly focused on enhancing commercial supply, especially fossil
fuels for electric power and transportation. This inherently presents a
conflict with climate-change issues. There has been substantial
attention paid to power-sector reforms in India and other Southasian
countries over the past decade, most of which have been aimed at
promoting economic efficiency and an investment-friendly climate. But
this has often precluded appropriate consideration of energy efficiency
on the end-use side.
In general, power-sector reforms have shown
only mixed success, with the agenda often driven by aid agencies and
multinational institutions, consonant with the general worldwide shift
towards market-based and private-sector-led approaches. Unfortunately,
this has marginalised indigenous approaches – for instance,
public-sector enterprises (PSEs), which had formed the backbone of
India’s development since Independence. Indeed, although market-based
reforms and greater competition in Indian PSEs (such as the state
electricity boards) were badly needed, it would
have been more fruitful to have focused on internally developed approaches.
Such overarching approaches do exist. For
example, in 2002 a new paradigm for the power sector was offered by T L
Sankar, a retired Indian Administrative Service officer. He proposed to
dedicate specific generators for specific consumers: low-cost
hydroelectricity and older coal-based plants would supply electricity
to agricultural pumps and rural electricity, whereas the more expensive
and newer coal- and gas-based power would supply industry and
commercial consumers. But ideas such as these were not seriously
considered in the debates preceding the Indian Electricity Act of 2003,
which was the culmination of the reforms process initiated by the World
Bank and others in early 1990s. In general, while economic reforms have
been well accepted by Southasian governments, few have paid much
attention to broader environmental or social justice concerns.
Finally, it should be noted that the
prevalent single-minded focus on the commercial energy sector
frequently ignores the issue of energy poverty, as defined above. There
have been some efforts towards tackling this problem, and there have
been a wide range of programmes aimed at providing services to the
poor. But in general, these have not been commensurate with the
magnitude of the challenge. Unlike China, which has, for instance, been
quite successful in deploying improved cookstoves, similar Indian
efforts have been far from triumphant. In some senses, the issue of
climate change has further marginalised the need to eliminate energy
poverty, since domestic and international concerns have been directed
towards the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions in developing countries
– a problem primarily of the motorised and electrified urban areas.
Hence, more than half a billion people in Southasia have been
overlooked due to the fact that they, by the virtue of their
involuntarily low-energy-consuming lifestyle, are contributing to the
low per-capita CO2 emissions in the region. Up to this point, much of
the attention regarding climate change has been focused on the
polluters, while the non-polluters get ignored.
Harnessing technology’s power
In essence, the global population is faced with three broad choices in
dealing with climate change. The first is mitigation: we can reduce our
CO2 emissions, thereby reducing the likelihood of catastrophic climate
change. Second, adaptation: we can undertake measures to reduce the
impact of climate change on human systems. And third, suffering: we can
merely bear the burnt of climate-change impacts. Clearly, this last
‘option’ is already ongoing. But it is the first two alternatives on
which the global community, including Southasian policymakers, needs to
focus immediately, and both of these would require dramatic changes in
the world’s energy sector. India has already initiated a policy process
in dealing with climate change with its Climate Action Plan
(see box), which indicates a good start even though a lot more is required.
Source: World Bank Human Development Network (Base year (mid-2000)
Resolving many of the contradictions and
challenges in the energy sector will require the implementation of a
range of new technologies and practices. These need to include
more-efficient ‘conversion’ and use of energy, and the development and
deployment of low-pollution and low greenhouse gas emitting
technologies, especially renewable-energy technologies. In addition,
better environmental practices in the energy sector, as well as
improvements in land use and forestry practices, will be necessary.
Fortunately, many of the required
technologies already exist. We also know about the practices that we
need to implement, including energy efficiency, environmental-impact
assessments and the like. The appropriate use of currently available
technologies, coupled with better practices, could do much to help to
resolve many of Southasia’s energy challenges. Moreover, with increased
investment in research and development of new technologies – such as
carbon capture and sequestration (ie, scrubbing CO2 from power plants,
compressing it into a liquid, and then pumping it into saline aquifers
underground), genetically altered biofuels, artificial photosynthesis,
high storage batteries, etc – there is also the potential of doing more
for the environment at less cost. In this, however, two critical
questions remain: When will these technologies and practices actually
be deployed? And who will take the political risk in changing the
status quo?
It is clear that every advanced technology
has its own niche, and there is no silver bullet that can meet all of
the challenges. In fact, the challenge of climate change is so great
that nearly all greenhouse-gas-reducing technologies must be considered
and given their due. This includes both renewable and fossil-fuel-based
technologies, assuming that these are highly efficient and are
potentially able to capture and sequester CO2. It is often believed
that renewables and energy efficiency by themselves can meet our energy
needs, and that fossil-fuel use must be drastically reduced
immediately. However, given the enormous dependence of our current
energy system on fossil fuels, one must slowly wean away from these in
order not to cause abrupt disruptive changes. Fossil fuels must be
considered as a bridge to a future energy system that is minimally
based on their use.
In terms of ‘alternate’ technologies that
exist today, there are several key options. In the power sector, these
include small-scale versus large hydroelectric installations; advanced
coal technologies versus inefficient coal-powered technologies; and
increased use of nuclear, solar photovoltaic, thermal, wind and
so-called advanced biomass technologies. In the transportation sector,
these include more mass transport (rail and buses) versus personal
transport (cars), more-efficient and hybrid-electric vehicles to
replace inefficient and dirty diesel vehicles, and increased use of
public urban transport and railways (as opposed to roads) for goods
transport. In the household and building sector, these include highly
efficient appliances (such as later model air conditioners, fans,
televisions, refrigerators and microwaves), efficient lighting (such as
CFL and LED light bulbs) versus incandescent bulbs, solar water
heaters, more-efficient motors for household water-lifting, rainwater
harvesting, and the use of trees and innovative landscaping to cool
buildings. Greater penetration of such efficient technologies would
clearly reduce energy consumption.
How to figure out which technologies are best to be deployed where and
when? The key dimensions on which these technologies must be compared
and contrasted include technical performance, economics,
socio-environmental impacts, availability of manufacturing and
maintenance capability within each individual country, and
institutional issues. Cost is a critical (but not the only) factor that
prevents the spread of new technologies. (Figure 5 compares the costs
of a whole range of such new technologies on an equivalent basis.)
Indeed, there already exists a spectrum of technologies with ‘negative’
costs – meaning that these technologies are already economical, yet
they are not being extensively used. This, then, brings us back to the
larger political and institutional issues.
Source: World Bank World Development Indicators (2007)
Each country in Southasia will have
specific issues to deal with regarding the different technologies, and
hence technology assessments will necessarily have to be tailored for
each local use. At the moment, however, energy-technology policy in the
region is not driven by such systematic technology assessments. For
example, the Southasian power sector is primarily driven by the need to
increase generating capacity, which inevitably has the result of
deploying the least risky and cheapest technology. In India, for
instance, the focus is primarily on continuing to build coal-fired
power plants. Technology decisions in the region also continue to be
made chiefly by small groups of experts and technocrats, without much
(if any) broader participation and stakeholder discussion and input –
especially from environmental groups and local communities.
Given the current rhetoric in the region,
particularly critical focus needs to be placed on one technology in
particular – hydroelectricity. After losing public acceptance decades
ago, hydro has been getting something of a makeover in recent years, as
it is touted as a renewable source of power supply, without any carbon
emissions. Given the water resources and hydropower potential in
Southasia, this power source is attracting a significant amount of
attention from funders such as the World Bank, which had previously
been forced to pull out of some projects due to hydro’s inherent social
and local environment impacts. But this renewed excitement could be
misplaced.
India and China are currently looking at
other Southasian countries, such as Nepal, Bhutan and Burma, as their
hydro ‘powerhouses’. Not only do these latter countries have massive
surplus hydro capacity at the moment, but India and China are even
hungrier to use this excess capacity due to the national and
international criticism they have faced for their own hydro projects,
such as the Narmada and Three Gorges installations. In turn, the
Himalayan countries with high hydro potential see this as a massive
revenue-generating opportunity. Recently, the Nepali Prime Minister
Pushpa Kamal Dahal stated that his country aimed to boost its
hydropower-generation capacity more than 15-fold in the coming decade,
to build some 10,000 megawatts of hydropower plants by 2020 – from
around just 630 MW today.
While hydropower might be good for
climate-change mitigation, hydropower is also among the most vulnerable
to the impacts of climate change, as water resources are closely linked
to the changes in climatic system. In a hotter world, there may be less
snow and ice in winter, thereby adversely affecting river flows the
rest of the year. In Nepal, China and elsewhere, the water stored in
glaciers could well decrease, and seasonal discharge rates would thus
gradually change. The hydrology of these Himalayan rivers could
likewise experience increased year-to-year variability, thus adversely
affecting the hydropower-generation potential. The expected increase in
climate variability may also trigger extreme climate events such as
floods and droughts, thus risking not only the dam but also the huge
populations living downstream. In the end, the majority of the answers
to Southasia’s pressing energy concerns might have to be found
elsewhere from the region’s large water resources. When hydropower is
utilised, it may need to function more as a cushion to the development
of other sectors.
Energising the aam janata
The development of new energy technologies
and their introduction into the marketplace often requires long time
scales and significant investment in their development. This is very
different from the development and introduction of consumer
electronics, for instance within the cell-phone industry. In the energy
sector, private players are often unwilling to invest the resources
necessary to develop suitable technologies, even if these benefit
society more widely. Such interests need to be assured of a suitable
market for their investment, and hence new technologies are often
extremely expensive in the initial stages.
For these reasons, the scale and complexity
of these energy technologies often requires the government to play a
role in their development. For example, given the large investments
needed for building power plants, without government support the
private sector would be unlikely to invest in cleaner and
more-efficient – but also more expensive and technologically risky –
technologies. Examples of such technologies include
coal-gasification-based power generation, carbon capture and
sequestration, large scale solar PV, off-shore wind, etc. Government
support, meanwhile, can come about through research and development,
subsidies or regulations.
On the global level, motivation for such action can come from an IEA
projection of the next two decades. Its researchers suggest that
overall global investments in the energy supply infrastructure from
2007 to 2030 in its reference scenario would be about USD 26 trillion
dollars, out of which India would have to invest about USD 1.8
trillion. Beyond the reference scenario, in order to maintain the
climate system at about 550 parts per million (about three times
pre-industrial levels), additional investments are needed to the tune
of more than USD 1.2 trillion in new technologies, and USD 3 trillion
in energy efficiency. These would, in effect, double the entire
energy-infrastructure investment in India and other major developing
countries.
Source: McKinsey and Vattenfall analysis
While there is a strong rationale for
government policies that support the research, development,
demonstration and deployment of appropriate energy technologies, those
in the capitals of Southasia also cannot continue their
business-as-usual attitudes. What is needed is a well-thought-out and
robust technology policy based on empirical data and analysis. Such a
policy would not choose technologies, but rather would allow companies
(private and public) to choose amongst the available technologies
(worldwide and developed indigenously). At all times, they would need
to keep in mind the particular historical trajectory in Southasia and
its current and future needs, challenges and constraints.
Once there is a consensus on what might be
the best (set of) technologies for a country to pursue, there is still
the question of what is the best approach to move down that path. A
good policy will, for any given choice, help in resolving the question
of whether to import, adapt or indigenously develop the technology. It
is also clear that India, as the largest energy consumer in the region,
has to make such research-and-development investments – investments
that can subsequently help its neighbours. One way or another, a
rational energy policy for both India and the rest of Southasia must
view energy as a means of achieving individual countries’ social and
developmental goals, and not an end in itself. In fact, by getting the
energy policy ‘right’, one can get the policies in other spheres to
also fall into place.
It is understandable that such a democratic
process is difficult. This is especially the case in the energy sector,
given the urgency of the energy need and the inherent complexity of the
sector. In fact, some may be of the view that strong centralisation is
necessary for the energy sector to improve. While such a centralised
process would indeed be useful in terms of implementation (in this,
China is a notable example), it should not be allowed to prevent new
ideas or stakeholder involvement. Currently, the mode of operation is
one in which the government proposes, and the people and local-level
NGOs oppose. This must change. Local interests, environmental groups,
the bureaucracy and the politicians all need to make compromises. The
longer it takes for this to happen, the longer the region’s energy
problems will extend.
At the same time, the aam janata, or common
people, must begin to hold their politicians and bureaucrats
accountable for their energy-related decision-making, beyond just at
the voting booth. The public must become more educated and be willing
to take part in public debates. All technology choices have opportunity
costs, and choosing any particular policy and technology trajectory has
its inherent pros and cons. For instance, increasing nuclear energy
means having to deal with more nuclear waste, greater dependency on
uranium imports, and greater potential for nuclear terrorism; greater
wind deployment requires a much better transmission grid with which to
carry the power from windy areas to areas of demand, as well as more
gas-based power plants to compensate for wind variability; more coal
plants means more coal mining and its associated problems, and
eventually the capturing of CO2 and storing it underground; and
increasing solar PV means more costly electricity, which the poor may
not be able to afford. At the same time, more nuclear, wind and solar
gives us electricity without carbon emissions, and more coal plants
allow us to continue to use domestic resources.
In the end, no matter what choices
Southasian governments ultimately make, they must be able to defend
these choices publicly. In explaining the complexity of our energy
system, its interconnections to the economy, and ways in which
decisions are being made in the government, the media must be a conduit
through which public debates can take root, not one in which mere
sensationalism prevails.
An actionable plan
As always, in terms of a regional energy
policy it will be crucial to see how India’s own approaches evolve, not
only as the largest economy in the region but also the physical link
between all of the neighbouring countries. It is important to note that
Southasian elites as a whole have similar consumption patterns; but
even here, what India does others follow. Beyond this, any feasible and
practical plan of re-energising Southasia will require short-term
(within five years) and longer-term (10+ years) activities. First and
foremost must be to increase efficiency in all stages of the energy
sector – at the extraction of energy resources, converting these
resources into usable energy, transmission and transportation of
energy, and at the end-use stage. Efficiency will give time and space
for the process of coming up with new options and polices for
reorienting the Southasian energy sector.
Despite the obvious benefits of efficiency
– reducing the pressure to expand energy supply, increasing energy
security, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, and decreasing local air
and water pollution – it is yet to be taken up by policymakers at the
level required. A good example is the Indian Bureau of Energy
Efficiency (BEE), which has made great strides towards the labelling of
appliances for efficiency and deciding on standards for various
industries, and it has come up with an innovative market mechanism for
promoting energy efficiency. Yet in spite of its laudatory work, BEE
remains a small statutory unit within the Power Ministry, a placement
that could easily hobble its work. Its resources are limited, precisely
at a time when an organisation such as this needs significantly more
funding and human resources in order to make a real dent in Indian
energy consumption. Similarly, other Southasian countries also have
much work to do as well in raising their energy efficiency.
In addition to efficiency, the transmission
and distribution (T&D) system for electricity needs to be
overhauled. According to the Indian Planning Commission and the CEA,
the sum of technical T&D losses and commercial losses (theft and
non-payment) in India are estimated to vary from 18 to 62 percent, with
the average for the country somewhere in the range of 34 to 40 percent.
In contrast, technical T&D losses average around just four to eight
percent in most industrialised countries. The CEA estimates that
reducing India’s losses to a more manageable 10 percent would release
the power equivalent to up to 12,000 MW of capacity. Although reducing
theft and non-payment would not significantly reduce demand, it would
increase revenues for the utilities and improve their precarious
financial condition.
Regardless of the importance of T&D
improvements, the focus in India today still remains capacity
additions. In India’s 10th Five-Year Plan, outlays for T&D were
half those for generation. While there have been continued efforts to
improve the grid in Southasia, which has trans-national aspects, the
resources put into the effort are not yet at a level comparable to the
challenge. Improving the grid is also particularly challenging because
there is already an existing grid to start with – redesigning and
improving an existing grid is far more challenging than building a new
one from scratch.
Beyond efficiency and T&D improvement,
all Southasian countries need to start mapping a route to a new energy
future – one that does not reject fossil fuels completely, but that is
significantly less dependent on fossil fuels and more on renewables and
carbon-neutral resources. No resource or technology should be dismissed
without a period of significant exploration or its merits. However, the
policy decision to support any technology, and more important how to
support them, must be take place only after detailed assessments are
undertaken of an entire range of technological options. What the
technology choices are will depend on the particular vision for
specific sector (see box). For example, in the power sector, a vision
without greenhouse-gas reduction will have no place for carbon capture
and sequestration technologies; a vision focused only on indigenous
technologies will not include advanced wind turbines or nuclear plants;
a vision with cheap electricity will only focus on coal power plants or
hydropower. Hence, it is very important for Southasian countries to
undertake ‘visioning’ exercises for each specific energy sector, where
a broad range of stakeholders are included.
India in particular will continue to depend
on coal for power generation for some time to come. The focus at the
moment must thus be to utilise India’s coal resources efficiently, and
to practice socially and environmentally sensitive mining. A recent
study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
indicates that the inclusion of better mining practices that reduce
environmental impacts would increase the cost of coal by two to six
times – thereby increasing the cost of power. Similarly, scrubbing CO2
out of power plants could further double power costs. Although carbon
capture and sequestration in Indian coal-fired power plants is
premature at the moment, the power sector must begin preparing for it
over the coming decade. While coal may need to be phased out in the
very long term, it is not feasible to do so in the next several
decades.
A significant issue is that of
decentralising power generation. While centralised power generation
will continue to be a norm for a long time to come, so-called
distributed power generation is another important class of technologies
that could become increasingly relevant in the region. Actually, at the
moment such distributed generation is already well entrenched – namely,
diesel generation sets in villages and suburban areas. In many urban
areas, these are used for backup power, and in some cases in rural
areas they are the primary source of electricity. Subsidies for diesel
and easy availability of the technology and its maintenance have led to
its rapid deployment. Indeed, lessons from the usage of diesel
generators would be useful for getting similar distributed generation
technologies based on solar, wind and biomass. Similar to diesel, these
distributed renewable technologies will also require subsidies to make
them cost competitive, and greater deployment will help in making them
technologically robust.
In the medium- to long term, pricing of the
entire energy sector needs to be changed to make it more uniform and
consistent, and the price should include socio-environmental costs. In
many ways, the current socio-environmental costs have been subsidised,
mainly by the poor and the indigenous communities who have been
devastated by mining and deforestation. In many cases, these pricing
reforms would only occur with broader institutional and regulatory
reforms. However, these changes need to come from within the region’s
countries, and not be driven from the outside. Existing institutions
may have to take on new roles, and in some cases multiple new
institutions may have to be created. All of this, again, needs
political will, which is possible to build with large stakeholder
consensus.
Leadership in transition
Dealing with climate change will be most difficult in Southasia, given
the politics surrounding the issue, both globally and regionally.
Currently, Southasia has no long-term vision, by country or regionally,
that includes dealing with the impact of climate change and the
mitigation of carbon emissions. Clearly, this must change.
Climate-change mitigation and adaptation must be a key element of any
future energy strategy; although in this region, it should be noted,
dealing with local pollution and socio-environmental issues might be
more critical in some cases. Climate change is particularly challenging
since Southasia (and other developing regions) have contributed little
so far in creating the problem. Yet there is immense pressure on them
(especially India) to take on carbon-mitigation commitments, driven in
large part by the US, which has thus far linked its own intransigence
to lack of formal commitments by developing countries. India has so far
not had any traction for its support of equal per-capita allocation,
and there is great pressure to get agreement on a post-Kyoto climate
treaty within a year or two.
Given its relative size in Southasia,
India would be most affected by any climate change treaty. India, like
all other major economies, will have to alter its
greenhouse-gas-emissions trajectory, despite the fact that India’s
energy economy will be strained by these efforts. In fact, it is in
India’s interest that the global negotiations produce a stringent
climate treaty for everyone, given the disproportionate impacts of
climate change in Southasia. Carbon mitigation in India would mean
increased energy prices in the short term, deploying more renewable and
nuclear energy sources, and greater research-and-development
expenditure on carbon capture and sequestration. In the longer term,
India will also have to deal with the more-difficult political
decisions on how to deal with climate migrants, both internal and
external.
The world is today in the midst of an
energy transition. The success of this transition is yet to be
determined, but we now have a good sense of what the challenges are and
what our new technologies need to do. More recently, we have even begun
to acknowledge some lifestyle changes that we need to make. The
transition is inevitable, but key questions remain regarding just how
quickly and how willingly different regions of the world are going to
embark on this transition. Although the path may not yet be apparent,
the questions for the people of this region are perfectly clear: Will
Southasia embrace the looming change and be a global leader, or will it
resist and be a laggard? Will the path forward be led by democratic
means, or will it be forced upon the countries of the region by events
beyond their control?
India’s Climate Action Plan
On
30 June 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released India’s first
National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), outlining existing and
future policies and programmes addressing climate mitigation and
adaptation. Emphasising the overriding priority of maintaining high
economic growth rates to raise living standards, the plan “identifies
measures that promote our development objectives while also yielding
co-benefits for addressing climate change effectively.” The NAPCC aims
to promote the development and use of solar energy for power generation
and other uses, with the ultimate objective of making solar competitive
with fossil-based energy options. It also aims to deploy at least 1000
MW of solar thermal power generation, and includes initiatives to build
on the Energy Conservation Act of 2001. In brief, the plan recommends:
•
Mandating specific energy-consumption decreases in large
energy-consuming industries, with a system for companies to trade
energy-savings certificates;
• Energy incentives, including reduced taxes on energy-efficient appliances; and
•
Financing for public-private partnerships, to reduce energy consumption
through demand-side management programmes in the municipal, buildings
and agricultural sectors.
There
are also plans for mandating the retirement of inefficient coal-fired
power plants, and supporting the research and development of
synthetic-gas power plants and supercritical technologies. In addition,
under the Electricity Act of 2003 and the National Tariff Policy of
2006, the central and state electricity regulatory commissions must
purchase a certain percentage of grid-based power from renewable
sources.
Based on a summary by the Pew Center
|
A new vision for coal
|
Ananth Chikkatur is with ICF International, in Virginia. The views expressed here are those of the author alone.
Sunita Dubey is with GroundWork USA, in Boston.
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