Energy-hungry India rapidly turning green
JUST a few years ago, the world watched nervously as India went on a building spree of coal-fired power plants, more than doubling its capacity and claiming that more were needed. Coal output, officials said, would almost triple, to 1.5 billion tons, by 2020.
India’s plans were cited by American critics of the Paris climate accord as proof of the futility of advanced nations trying to limit their carbon output. But now, even as President Trump pulls the United States out of the pact, India has undergone an astonishing turnaround, driven in great part by a steep fall in the cost of solar power.
Experts now say India not only has no need of new coal-fired plants for at least a decade, given that existing plants are running below 60 percent of capacity, but that after that it could rely on renewable sources for all its power needs.
Rather than building coal-fired plants, it is now cancelling many in the early planning stages. And last month, the government lowered its annual production target for coal to 600 million tonnes from 660 million.
The sharp reversal, welcome news to world leaders trying to avert the potentially deadly effects of global warming, is a reflection both of the changing economics of renewable energy and a growing environmental consciousness in a country with some of the worst air pollution in the world.
What India does matters, because it is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the US. And its energy needs are staggering – nearly one-quarter of its population has no electricity and many others get it only intermittently.
With India’s power needs expected to grow substantially as its economy expands, its energy use will heavily influence the world’s chances of containing the greenhouse gases that scientists believe are driving global warming.
Much attention at the time of the signing of the Paris agreement was focused on the role President Barack Obama played in pushing India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to sign. In doing so, Modi committed India to achieving 40 percent of its electricity capacity from nonfossil-fuel sources by 2030.
Less understood was Modi’s longstanding personal commitment to taking India in a greener direction. That has been strengthened in recent years by growing evidence that a greener path makes political and economic sense as well, says Harsh Pant, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based research organisation.
“Modi’s constituency is the middle class, and the middle class in Indian cities is choking on pollution,” Pant said. “Modi knows climate change is good politics. Climate change makes sense to Modi because he believes it as it is good economics and politics.”
Two major economic factors lie at the heart of India’s move away from coal. The first is that the country’s growth rate, while faster than that of most major economies, slipped to 6.1 percent for the most recent quarter, down from 7 percent in the previous quarter. And much of that growth has come in service industries rather than in powerhungry manufacturing.
Equally important is the startling drop in the price of renewable energy sources. Many energy experts say renewables are poised to become a less expensive alternative to coal within the next decade.
“The train has left the station. Mr Trump has come too late” to slow the transition to renewable energy, said Ajay Mathur, director general of the Energy Resources Institute, a New Delhi policy centre closely associated with the government. “By the time the coalfired plants come up to full capacity because of increasing demand, the price of renewables will be lower than the price of coal.”