EV proliferation could make carbon reduction harder

is a Pune-based economist.

India’s electricity consumption is growing at nearly 9% per year, faster than real gross domestic product (GDP). That is understandable, since economic growth involves rapid urbanization, which is electricityintensive. It is also possible that in the nearterm, GDP growth has higher energy intensity beyond electricity. Given that energy or electricity in India is still dominated by coal and other fossil fuels, carbon emissions are going up, even in per capita terms. Until India reaches middle-income status, it is difficult to imagine how its GDP growth can be less energy- and carbon-intensive. India’s annual coal consumption is close to a billion tonnes and will rise to 1.4 billion by 2030. The load factors of our thermal plants are improving somewhat, slowing down coal demand growth. The projection factors in the expansion of renewable-energy capacity to 450 gigawatts by 2030 and assumes that India will keep its climate pledge of having at least 40% of its power-generation capacity from non-fossil fuels by then.

Adding complexity to the challenge of sustaining high urban-oriented GDP growth while lowering carbon intensity is the ambition to turn mobility electric. In the last financial year, more than 1 million new electric vehicles (EVs) rolled onto Indian roads. This year, the number could be 50% higher. Presently, only about 1% of all vehicles run on electricity. India aims a 30% vehicle penetration by 2030. Imagine what it will do to electricity demand. There are two aspects of this. One is the quantum of electricity units needed to charge EV batteries and the other is the increased wherewithal required across generators, grids and transformers to handle EV-charging in surge mode. A battery that needs four hours of charging with a 100kilowatt source will need a 16-times bigger power source if it has to be fast-charged when it is outdoors. Simultaneous demand of such surge-charging could trip a transformer, or worse, lead to a grid collapse if the scale is seriously large. Not only will it require a radical redesign of our grid infrastructure, but increased demand for generation will also have to be factored in. The ambition of accelerated electric mobility to 30% by 2030 directly collides with India’s Paris pledge and also our net-zero goal by 2070, unless electricity production shifts to nuclear or hydro sources on a large scale. Solar will not be able to meet demand without enormous overnight storage capacity.

One way out is to use the massive and diffused network of electric cars for power storage. The usual intuitive approach is to charge your EV at home at low wattage all night so that you have a fully-charged vehicle to drive during the day. This is a bad idea because night charging uses up fossil fuelbased electricity. Instead, your car should run on an almost-empty battery charge in the morning to reach office. While parked in a parking lot, your EV could use a solar roof to charge its battery all day long. And then you can bring a fully-charged battery back home every evening to run your household appliances on the electricity stored in your vehicle. This is how we can turn a vast number of automobiles into decentralized storage devices with daily solarpanel charging. This is a bit difficult to implement in congested cities, but by using a large land-surface area to create huge parking lots, it should be possible. A country like Australia, richly endowed with sunshine and a rapidly-growing solar industry, is well poised to use this approach.

An unexpected growth in electricity demand is most dramatically manifest in North America. For the six years prior to 2023, demand was flat at roughly 250,000300,000 gigawatt hours, according to data compiled by North American Electric Reliability Corp for the US, Canada and part of Baja California in Mexico. This flat demand was in line with slow GDP growth, ageing populations and greater energy efficiency. But then demand jumped nearly 150% to 564,000 gigawatt hours in 2023. This has been attributed to an unforeseen spike in demand from artificial intelligence investments, server farms and powerhungry chips, not to forget demand from cryptomining farms and data servers. Indeed, data servers are estimated to

EVs require solar roofs so that they can charge while parked in the sun even as we push for a clean grid, use battery swapping to minimize surge charging and encourage public transport. already account for more than 2% of total electricity consumption and a much larger carbon footprint. Mobile charging consumes more electricity than a fridge over a month. The United States has been experiencing power outages, with the highest number recorded in 2022 across major states like California and Texas. Unless the US grid infrastructure is extensively redesigned and rebuilt, such occurrences will only get more frequent.

India too should brace itself to upgrade its grid capacity, connectivity and resilience to handle spikes in power demand. To meet the challenge of increased electric mobility while also reducing its carbon footprint, India will have to adopt a multi-pronged policy. First, move towards non-fossil fuel electricity to charge batteries. Second, use battery swapping to minimize surge charging. Third, use EVs as distributed storage devices for solar power. Fourth, make big investments in urban public transportation to partly reduce the need for private vehicles. Sixth, offer incentives to reduce demand for mobility and commuting, and encourage work-from-home, at least in the digital economy. Achieving a balance between our electrification and decarbonization goals is not going to be easy.