Wastelands in Thar become hot spots for economic activities
JODHPUR: The wastelands in the Thar Desert have now become hot spots for economic activity with the establishment of renewable energy generation plants. So far, solar power plants have been set up on 10,736 hectare wasteland in western Rajasthan, revealed a geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing based analysis conducted by the Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI) recently.
“Salt affected land, gullied or ravenous land, scrubland, sandy area and barren, rocky and stony waste are the examples of wasteland types in the state. In western Rajasthan, 46473.7 hectares area (22% of total geographical area) is covered by various types of wastelands. Among the districts, Jaisalmer has the maximum area under wastelands (53.21% of total wasteland area), followed by Bikaner (14.89%) and Barmer (10.28%),”said Dr OP Yadav, director, CAZRI.
CAZRI at Jodhpur is engaged in assessment and mapping of desertification status of arid areas in India since the preparation for the first United Nations Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) at Kenya in 1977. Along with this, scientists are also constantly evaluating and monitoring the land use pattern of natural resources and wastelands to highlight the economic, social and ecological changes in the Thar Desert. “In recent years, wastelands in desert regions have become hot spots for their utilization for economic activities. Such wastelands are being utilized for establishing windmills and solar plants for renewable energy production in the districts of Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Barmer, Jodhpur and Nagaur. Western Rajasthan has become a hub for renewable energy production and high quality solar panels have been put in place, which has changed the landscape of wastelands,” said Dr PC Moharana, principal scientist, adding that the best of examples is the solar park in Bhadla in Jodhpur. It is the world’s largest solar park and is spread over a total area of 2 14,000 acres.
“This study has used sentinel satellite images of European Space Agency (ESA), 2020, for delineating the extent of solar plant sites in western Rajasthan. With a spatial resolution of 10 m, this data provides high resolution images.
Google Earth images which have higher resolution were used for verifying the delineation,” he said.
The result of GIS based mapping and analysis indicated that about 10736 hectare area is under solar plants. Altogether, there are 122 sites where wastelands of various types (sandy, rocky, gravelly and saline) have been utilized for establishing solar plant sites. Maximum sites are found in Jodhpur district (70 sites, 7904.40 hectares), Jaisalmer (11 sites, 1394.27 hectares), Bikaner (38 sites, 1303.27 hectares) and Nagaur (3 sites, 134.64 hectares) out of which 90 sites are on sandy uplands or plains, 30 sites on rocky and gravelly plains, and 2 sites established on saline plains.
“All these sites are located in the driest part of Thar Desert, where the climate is too harsh. Average wind speeds are up to 27 km/hour and annual rainfall is low. Majority of the area is covered by sand dunes of various types and few extensive areas under rocky, gravelly plains and saline ranns. Under such conditions, cropping is possible only once a year. Recently, due to change in government policies, wastelands have started being utilized for solar and wind energy based renewable energy production. There is a significant change in the landscape of wastelands which is likely to enhance economic activities in the desert region,” said DrMoharana.
According to departmental information, at present the installed wind energy production capacity of Rajasthan is 4326 MW. The central government has set a target for the country to achieve 60 GW of installed wind power capacity by 2022. The Rajasthan Government has set a target to install an additional 4000 MW of wind power capacity and an additional 3500 MW of wind-solar hybrid capacity by 2024-25.The present solar energy production capacity of 5472 MW capacity including 419 MW capacity of Solar Roof- top plants in the State. As per Rajasthan Solar Energy Policy-2019, a target of 30GW capacity addition up to financial year 2024-25 has been set.