India’s need for electricity a huge problem for the planet
CHOWKIPUR, INDIA: Dusk descends on a village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar as residents start their evening chores. Women walk in a line, balancing packets of animal fodder on their heads. Others lead their water buffalo home before dinner.
Overhead loom bare utility poles – built but never wired for electricity – casting long shadows across the landscape.
Of the world’s 1.3 billion people who live without access to power, a quarter - about 300 million – live in rural India in states such as Bihar. Nighttime satellite images of the sprawling subcontinent show the story: Vast swaths of the country still lie in darkness.
India, the third-largest emitter of greenhouses gases after China and the United States, has taken steps to address climate change in advance of the global talks in Paris this year – pledging a steep increase in renewable energy by 2030.
But India’s leaders say that the huge challenge of extending electric service to its citizens means a hard reality – that the country must continue to increase its fossil fuel consumption, at least in the near term, on a path that could mean a threefold increase in greenhouse- gas emissions by 2030, according to some estimates.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked climate change with President Obama in September at the United Nations, he was careful to note that he and Obama share “an uncompromising commitment on climate change without affecting our ability to meet the development aspirations of humanity.”
Here in this little village, a single solar light bulb gleams.
It belongs to the family of Satish Paswan, 35, a farmer who sold a bit of his family’s land to purchase a solar panel and light a few months back for about US$ 88 ( RM370). He wanted his five children to be able to do their homework.
“We feel very ashamed and bad that other neighbouring villages are enjoying power facility and we don’t have it,” Paswan said. “Whenever a small leader or a big leader belonging to the ruling party comes here, they promise their first priority is to provide electricity to the villages. But they have never fulfilled that promise.”
Fossil fuel generation of electricity is the largest single source of greenhousegas emissions worldwide. Yet demand for inexpensive power will rise in a great tide in the decades to come, especially in South Asia and sub- Saharan Africa, the two regions of the globe with the least access to electricity. All the countries of Africa, taken together, have twice as many people without electricity as India does – 622 million. No country is content with that.
“It’s a matter of shame that 68 years after independence we have not been able to provide a basic amenity like electricity,” Piyush Goyal, India’s minister of state for power, coal and new and renewable energy, said recently.
The Indian government has launched an ambitious project to supply 24-hour power to its towns and villages by 2022 - with plans for miles of new feeder lines, infrastructure upgrades and solar microgrids for the remotest areas.
If India’s carbon emissions continue to rise, by 2040 it will overtake the United States as the world’s second-highest emitter, behind only China, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.
Yet the Indian government has long argued that the United States and other industrialised nations bear a greater responsibility for the cumulative damage to the environment from carbon emissions than developing nations - with Modi urging “climate justice” and chiding Western nations to change their wasteful ways.
Total carbon dioxide emissions for India were 1.7 tons per capita in 2012, the most recent complete data available, compared with 6.9 tons for China and 16.3 tons for the United States, according to the World Resources Institute. Officials say they are keenly aware of India’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change: Rising sea levels, drought, flooding and food security.
Yet the government says
But India’s leaders say that the huge challenge of extending electric service to its citizens means a hard reality - that the country must continue to increase its fossil fuel consumption, at least in the near term, on a path that could mean a threefold increase in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030, according to some estimates.
it must depend on fossil fuels to bring an estimated 30 per cent of the population out of extreme poverty. “We cannot abandon coal,” said Jairam Ramesh, the former environment minister and climate negotiator, and author of the book “Green Signals: Ecology, Growth, and Democracy in India.” “It would be suicidal on our part to give up on coal for the next 15 to 20 years, at least, given the need.”
Although 300 million Indians have no access to power, millions more in the country of 1.2 billion people live with spotty supplies of electricity from the country’s unreliable power grid. The grid failed spectacularly in 2012, plunging more than 600 million people into total blackout.
In the country’s high-tech capital of Bangalore, for example, residents have recently had to endure hours of power outages each day after repairs and a bad monsoon season prevented the state’s hydroelectric and wind power plants from generating enough electricity.
Many of the giant IT companies have their own generating systems – Infosys, for example, is building its own solar park – but small businesses and residents in rural and urban areas are suffering, said Harish Hande, the chairman of Selco-India, a social enterprise that provides solar power in Karnataka.
“How do we manage our supply and make sure we put money aside for infrastructure? If you look at the future, it’s what we need,” he said, “but there’s not a single thing that’s moving ahead.”
Estimates show that India’s power woes cost the economy anywhere from one per cent to three per cent of gross domestic product – an impediment to Modi’s hopes to expand the economy and make the country more hospitable to manufacturing, according to Rahul Tongia, a fellow with Brookings India. Electricity demand will increase sevenfold by mid- century as the population continues to grow, experts say. — WP-Bloomberg