fossil fuel Archives - The India Climate Observatory

Health now part of PM’s Council on Climate Change

July 21, 2015 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change has included a new Mission on Climate Change and Health. A National Expert Group on Climate Change and Health has been constituted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to address the issues related to adverse effects of climate change on human health.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, there is increasing concern in India over the effects of climate change on human health. Climate change affects the social and environmental determinants of health and weather events such as storms, floods, cyclones amplify the spread of vector-borne diseases, and the spread of food- and water-borne diseases.

There are complex interactions between both causes and effects. Ecological processes, such as impacts on biodiversity and changes in disease vectors, and social dynamics, can amplify these risks. Graphic: Lancet

Work under this new mission is expected to complement running initiatives such as the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS). This programme focuses on prevention through awareness generation, behavior and life-style changes, early diagnosis and treatment of persons with high levels of risk factors and their referral to higher facilities for appropriate management. Funding is provided for human resources, infrastructure, early screening, and treatment as well as for Information, Education & Communication (IEC) activities.

India and China suffer over USD 1.89 trillion annually in terms of the value of lives lost and ill health caused from air pollution, according to a major recent report which has underlined how climate change threatens to undermine half a century of progress in global health.

An overview of the links between greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and health. Social responses also ameliorate some risks through adaptive actions. Graphic: Lancet

The analysis by the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change concluded that the benefits to health resulting from slashing fossil fuel use are so large that tackling global warming also presents the greatest global opportunity to improve people’s health in the 21st century. The Commission’s work was supported by the UN World Health Organisation.

The current trajectory, of average global temperature warming by 4 Celsius has very serious and potentially catastrophic effects for human health and human survival. The Commission said this must be seen as a medical emergency. The comprehensive analysis sets out the direct risks to health, including heatwaves, floods and droughts, and indirect – but no less deadly – risks, including air pollution, spreading diseases, famines and mental ill-health. A rapid phase-out of coal from the global energy mix is among the commission’s top recommendations, given the millions of premature deaths from air pollution this would prevent.

“The effects of climate change are being felt today, and future projections represent an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human health,” said the report. “The implications of climate change for a global population of 9 billion people threatens to undermine the last half century of gains in development and global health. The direct effects of climate change include increased heat stress, floods, drought, and increased frequency of intense storms, with the indirect threatening population health through adverse changes in air pollution, the spread of disease vectors, food insecurity and under-nutrition, displacement, and mental ill health.”

Why climate action must beware the fakery of funds

July 4, 2015 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Residents use a boat to cross flood waters in Kota Bahru on December 28, 2014. Photo: RT / AFP / Mohd Rasfan. Photo by AFP Photo / Mohd Rasfan

We call upon the Ministry of Environment, Government of India, to stop pursuing the so-called Green Climate Fund as the means with which action to manage climate change can be financially supported. This so-called fund is in the end a means for the Western world – West Europe, Scandinavia, USA with Britain and Canada in tow, Australia and New Zealand, a feckless Japan and ditto South Korea – to maintain the empty but loud institutions they have set up by the dozens in the cause of climate change.

Inter Press Service has reported that the United Nations is seeking 100 billion US dollars per year by 2020 as part of a Green Climate Fund (GCF) “aimed at supporting developing countries strengthen their resilience and help adapt themselves to meet the foreboding challenges”. This is meretricious nonsense. Countries that the UN system, and the agencies of monetary ruin – World Bank, IMF, ADB and the like – call ‘developing’ do not need the prattling office-bearers of a crony international system to advise them. Countries of the South have plentiful intellectual, practical, financial and social resources to deal with climate change and the host of problems the Western countries have burdened our world with.

The Green Climate Fund, says the IPS report, may not be as realistic in its objectives as the Western-OECD alliance pretends but supporters of this Fund (naturally) are more concerned instead with how the target can be reached or neared: naturally because that is how they will derive a continuing relevance and legitimacy – both empty as far as we are concerned – which allows them to run expensive institutions and pay out immodest consultancies that serve only the Western-OECD alliance. Ignored by this glib army is the fact that, beginning from their own austerity-wracked countries, public finance for such profligacy is absent. Still they demand, like fahrenheit Shylocks, public finance for subsidies with which to “attract and leverage private investments”.

A host of ancillary agencies contributes to perpetuating this long-running fraud. Amongst the confused babble of Western-OECD support for the so-called Green Climate Fund can be found three common clauses: one, that developed nations should commit to increasing all public funding flows to 2020; two, that developed countries use new and innovative sources of finance toward the 2020 goal (such as redirected fossil fuel subsidies, carbon market revenues, financial transaction taxes, export credits); three, that all parties should clarify the definition of climate finance and development of methodologies so that accounting and reporting are improved.

These are nothing but cunning gambits advanced as justification for the continuing tenure of the Western-OECD climate-related institutions and their circles of charmed academic and finance cronies. First, developed countries have fallen short of basic overseas aid commitments for the last two generations, never mind climate finance. Under continuing austerity, it is foolish for the UN and its supporters on this subject to still preach in favour of a funding mechanism that rests on Western largesse.

Second, the ‘new and innovative’ has been experimented with for a decade with carbon exchanges and has made no impact (just as ‘deregulated’ energy markets, which are older, have not led to more sensible energy use by consumers or producers). But this is proposed in order to cement the positions of a new trading class, and its banking adjutants, in the area of climate finance. Third, the call for definitions and methodologies is part of the Western-led drive towards normative standards for the world, which will rely on its own Western bureaucracy to enforce the next mutation of trade sanctions on independent-minded countries and Southern country blocs – climate sanctions.

Our message to the profiteers of this true emerging market is: we can see through your ruse and know your game. Stop it now.

– Rahul Goswami

No American chop suey, thank you

November 13, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama address a joint press conference following their talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Photo: Xinhua / Liu Weibing

Trade and manufacturing, geo-strategic ambitions and power jockeying, these are the objectives behind the so-called ‘deal’ between China and USA on ‘cutting’ carbon emissions and pollution. The ‘deal’ was announced at the conclusion of the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Summit, held in Beijing, China, and therefore partly reflected the agendas of Asian trade within the region and with the USA.

The ‘deal’ on climate between President of China Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama indicates in the first place the internal compulsions faced by the governing leaderships that they represent in both countries. This balancing however is commonplace at economic and trade summits, where new agreements and pacts are presented as being good for the international order, but whose details reveal the truth. [Read the special India Climate Watch bulletin here.]

So it is with the Xi-Obama ‘deal’ on climate change and emissions, but with added aspects that are disturbing for the shape that the post-Kyoto framework on climate action is taking. According to media reports (mainly from the USA), representatives of the two governments have been negotiating for several months so that this ‘deal’ could be announced now.

If true, this tells us that equality of representation at international climate negotiations, and that a multi-lateral approach itself, are being ignored by the world’s biggest polluting country (China) and the world’s biggest economy (the USA, measured in current US dollars only). In preparing for such a ‘deal’ therefore, the political leaderships of both countries have signalled that their international responsibilities towards climate justice matter less than bolstering a trading system which rests on globalised production, deployment of capital and homogenous consumption.

The IPCC’s advice on reaching resilience during an era of changing climate. Quite ignored by the leadership of the two biggest polluting countries. Image: IPCC

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, issued a statement welcoming this ‘deal’. In it Ban has welcomed “the joint announcement” by the two leaders “of their post-2020 action on climate change, as an important contribution to the new climate agreement to be reached in Paris next year”. The UN must perforce look for some positive element in any such ‘deal’, but calling it an important contribution to COP 21 (conference of parties) to be held in Paris in 2015 is misleading.

Ban’s own statement has mentioned the need for “a meaningful, universal agreement in 2015” however the Beijing announcement signals that the opposite will ensue – economic and trading blocs will continue to advance their separate agendas and so subordain the responses required to climate change.

Ban has also welcomed “the commitment expressed by both leaders to increase their level of ambition over time as well as the framing of their actions in recognition of the goal of keeping global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius”.

This too is not so. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (maintained by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre) has said that the required reduction in the increase in global CO2 emissions can be achieved provided: (a) China achieves its own target of a maximum level of energy consumption by 2015 and its shift to gas with a natural gas share of 10% by 2020; (b) the USA continues a shift its energy mix towards more gas and renewable energy; and (c) European Union member states agree on restoring the effectiveness of the EU Emissions Trading System to further reduce actual emissions. The actions thus outlined for the USA and China will under the new ‘deal’ either not take place or be loosely and ineffectually interpreted.

The view of China’s political establishment is visible in the treatment of the climate ‘deal’ by its official media. In its commentary on the Xi-Obama meeting, Xinhua, the state news agency, explained that President Xi Jinping “outlined six priorities in building a new type of major-country relationship with the United States”. The language and manner indicate that what is being presented in the media as a ‘landmark deal’ between the two countries on climate change is in fact part of a continuing re-negotiation of the roles of both countries in today’s world.

Special bulletin of the India Climate Watch on the China-USA climate ‘deal’.

The six priorities (this label follows the typical political construction of policy China – for years the ‘three represents’ of the Chinese Communist Party had guided state thinking) are: communication between high-level officials, mutual respect, cooperation in all aspects, management of disputes, collaboration in the Asia-Pacific and joint actions on global challenges. The response to climate change is part of the sixth priority, joint actions on global challenges (which also includes counter-terrorism and epidemic control). In its official statement on the ‘deal’, China has pointed out that in 2013 bilateral trade between the USA and the People’s Republic soared to US$ 520 billion while two-way investment stood at US$ 100 billion. This volume and flow is what will be protected to the extents possible by both governments.

The staged euphoria over this ‘deal’ does not obscure its non-binding nature. According to commentary from the People’s Republic, 2030 would be set as the peak year for its soaring greenhouse gas emissions, while the USA said it would cut emissions by more than a quarter from 2005 levels by 2025.

Data from the International Energy Agency show that for the USA, total final oil products consumption in 2012 was 717 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe; in 2007 the quantity was 829 mtoe) while the totals for all energy sources were 1,432 mtoe in 2012 which was a reduction from 1,572 mtoe in 2007). In China, total final oil products consumption in 2012 was 421 mtoe (in 2007 it was 308 mtoe) while the use of coal continued to rise – 558 mtoe in 2012 whereas it was 480 mtoe in 2007. In China the totals for all energy sources was 1,703 mtoe in 2012 which is 28% above what it was (1,326 mtoe) five years earlier.

A rapid analysis carried out by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) indicates that: (1) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the USA in 2025 will be 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent; from 1990 levels, the USA will reduce its emissions by just 15-17% by 2025; to meet the 2C target, US emissions should be at least 50-60% per cent below 1990 levels considering its historical responsibility of causing climate change, and (2) China’s emissions will peak at 17-20 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030 and its per capita emissions in 2030 will be 12-13 tons; these are not in line with the 2C emissions pathways put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC has, less than a fortnight ago, presented the need for what it bluntly calls “zero net emissions” by 2100 – and that means changing economies and trade and the trend of globalisation now – to avert the worst. But the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has called the China-US climate ‘deal’ “a heartening development, a good beginning and I hope the global community follows this lead and maybe builds on it”. This is certainly not the lead to follow, for it ignores the IPCC’s stark warning, and instead signals that global and regional powers can bully their way to gaining sanction for furthering their short-term economic agendas even while climate science demands that they do otherwise.

– Rahul Goswami

No time left: the IPCC message

November 3, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

In the just released synthesis report of the Fifth Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is one short section that must be read and understood quickly by India, our neighbours in South Asia and by the so-called ‘developing’ and ‘less developed’ countries.

This is a section – ‘3.1 Foundations of decision-making about climate change’ – in the ‘Approved Summary for Policymakers’ of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report.

The section has explained: “Climate change has the characteristics of a collective action problem at the global scale, because most greenhouse gases accumulate over time and mix globally, and emissions by any agent (individual, community, company, country) affect other agents.”

The section goes on to warn: “Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests independently. Cooperative responses, including international cooperation, are therefore required to effectively mitigate GHG emissions and address other climate change issues.”

These two groups of statements are extremely important for India and our neighbours in Asia. There has been far too much attention and action given to the negotiations about the shape and terms of agreements on climate change (the Kyoto Protocol and its successor) and far too little on what administrative regions must do regardless. Note that this section places “international cooperation” as a sub-set of cooperative responses, not as the starting point.

This view is restated in the same section: “The effectiveness of adaptation can be enhanced through complementary actions across levels, including international cooperation. The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to more effective cooperation.” [See the headline statements of the summary for policymakers here or click on the image above for a pdf.]

Thus the message to policy-makers is clear – what counts is what you do at home, in states and districts. The expectation that “international cooperation” should guide effective adaptation at all levels is no longer (and in our view has never been) tenable. [The longer synthesis report is available here.]

The Synthesis Report distils and integrates the findings from the AR5, which is comprised of three working group reports on the ‘Physical Science Basis’ (WG1); ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’ (WG II); and ‘Mitigation of Climate Change’ (WG III). The summary for policymakers of the synthesis report was negotiated line by line among governments and the authors, while the synthesis report itself was adopted page by page.

Warm streets, cold summits

September 25, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

A part of the people’s march against climate change in New York, USA. Photo: Reuters / Eduardo Munoz

The United Nations Climate Summit 2014, held on 23 September, can be considered as a study in two contrasts. On the one hand was the People’s Climate March – an enormous gathering of concerned citizens in New York, USA, which may have seen a combined total of some 400,000 people. The marchers through their diversity and energy delivered one message in many creative ways. That message was: we citizens can and will rid the planet of fossil fuels and nuclear power, that such action will be demanding and difficult but we will do it at the grassroots and make a difference there.

On the other hand was the Climate Summit. This, said the UN, would serve as a public platform for leaders at the highest level, by which is meant all UN Member States, as well as finance, business, civil society and local leaders from public and private sectors. The gathering, said the UN, would “catalyse ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience and mobilise political will for an ambitious global agreement by 2015 that limits the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature”.

Did it succeed? No and yes. If there has been a gain from the events of 23 September it is to strengthen their individual and community resolve to act locally in an effort to tackle both the effects and the causes of climate change.

Where the Summit itself is concerned, against the background of 22 years of negotiations and conferences on climate change (the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came about in 1992) it proved to be atypical. There were a number of promises and resolutions made to add to the mountain of such promises and resolutions but this summit – like every single other summit before it – brought no significant response from the political establishment.

Unsurprisingly, this is not how the UN sees the outcome of its recent work, for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon summed up the Summit as “a great day, a historic day. Never before have so many leaders gathered to commit to action on climate change”. Ban said that the Summit he called “delivered” because the many leaders attending “reaffirmed determination to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius by cutting emissions”.

Such announcements underline the contrast between the desire on the street and the cold comfort of summit announcements (now in their 22nd year). On 23 September the UN tip-toed around the large global and regional corporations (and their financier special interests) whose business practices have deepened environmental and socio-economic emergencies all over the world, and which are responsible for worsening – much less alleviating – the vulnerabilities of populations exposed to the risk of climate change.

The UN has regrettably turned into a recurring practice this avoiding of issues central to climate change (see the summary document, pdf, 243kb). But, at the same time, the UN together with a host of organisations that have more or less to do with climate change (private, academic, industry fora and so on) repeated once more a worn roster of promises.

These are:
* “Strong support” for the Green Climate Fund, with one more total being pledged (precious little has been actually transferred) and still more being “committed” (these are all commitments with renewable expiry dates).

* “A new coalition of governments, business, finance, multilateral development banks and civil society leaders” (what happened to all the other coalitions announced grandly at every other summit?) which once again was quick to commit to providing US$ 200 billion “for financing low-carbon and climate-resilient development”, including banks which want a ‘Green Bonds’ market.

* That carbon pricing continues to be “one of the most powerful tools available for reducing emissions and generating sustainable development and growth”, which in the end is a promise to continue the commodification and financialisation of emissions, an extremely troublesome industry whose regulation has proved difficult.

Instead of such expensive jamborees whose recycled announcements do little more than provide a false sense of security to citizens, the UN should emulate the example of the marchers and encourage small, local and meaningful action.

After the sound-and-light show of the Climate Summit 2014 we advocate just as strongly as before that it is local development – of, by, and for the people – which finds and leverages appropriate technology, encourages open source collaboration, and focuses on pragmatic, technical solutions to our problems, that will make the difference. Such action alone will reduce our impact on the environment and hedge households and communities against natural disasters made worse by a ritual of inaction.

India’s giant megawatt trap

September 10, 2014 by Climate portal editor 1 Comment

A panel of charts that show India’s energy consumption, imports, and dependence on fossil fuel.

Electricity as fundamental right and energy convenience as the basis of ‘development’ in Bharat and in India. If this is what Piyush Goyal means when he says his government is “is committed to ensure affordable 24×7 power” then it will come as yet another commitment that supports energy provision and consumption as the basis for determining the well-being of Bharat-vaasis and Indians (the UPA’s Bharat Nirman was the predecessor). But the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy cannot, using such a promise, ignore the very serious questions about the kind of ‘development’ being pursued by the NDA-BJP government and its environmental and social ramifications.

Goyal has said, via press conferences and meetings with the media, that the NDA government is committed to ensuring affordable power at all times (’24 x 7′ is the expression he used, which must be banished from use as being a violent idea – like nature our lives follow cycles of work and rest and ’24 x 7′ violently destroys that cycle). Goyal has promised, pending the taking of a series of steps his ministry has outlined, that such a round the clock provision of electric power will be extended to “all homes, industrial and commercial establishments” and that there will be “adequate power for farms within five years”.

The summary of India’s power generation capacity, by type and by region. Source for data: Central Electricity Authority

Some of the very serious questions we raise immediately pertain to what Goyal – with the help of senior ministry officials and advisers – has said. The NDA-BJP government will spend Rs 75,600 crore to (1) supply electricity through separate feeders for agricultural and rural domestic consumption, said Goyal, which will be used to provide round the clock power to rural households; and (2) on an “integrated power development initiative” which involves strengthening sub-transmission and distribution systems in urban areas. This is part of the “transformative change” the ministry has assured us is for the better. Goyal and his officials see as a sign of positive transformation that coal-based electricity generation from June to August 2014 grew by nearly 21 per cent (compared with the same months in 2013), that coal production is 9% higher in August 2014 compared with August 2013, and that Coal India (the largest coal producer company in the world which digs out 8 of every 10 tons of coal mined in India) is going to buy 250 more goods rakes (they will cost Rs 5,000 crore) so that more coal can be moved to our coal-burning power plants.

We must question the profligacy that the Goyal team is advancing in the name of round the clock, reliable and affordable electricity to all. To do so is akin to electoral promises that are populist in nature – and which appeal to the desire in rural and urban residents alike for better living conditions – and which are entirely blind to the environmental, health, financial and behavioural aspects attached to going ahead with such actions. In less than a fortnight, prime minister Narendra Modi (accompanied by a few others) will attend the United Nations Climate Summit 2014. Whether or not this summit, like many before it, forces governments to stop talking and instead act at home on tackling anthropogenic climate change is not the point. What is of concern to us is what India’s representatives will say about their commitment to reduce the cumulative impact of India’s ‘development’, with climate change being a part of that commitment.

At the UN Climate Summit 2014, it will be heard (in as many languages as there are translators available for them) that energy demand is growing along with expanding global wealth (but the UN will not say how unequally that extra wealth has been distributed). There will be grave references made to growing populations with a large number still without the round the clock electricity that Goyal has promised. Many speakers (eminent experts, as the UN system calls them) will be mobilised to remind the gathering that a shift toward renewable sources of energy (such as solar, wind and geothermal) is needed, that greater energy efficiency in appliances, buildings, lighting and vehicles are needed, and that this is so because it is essential to use the world’s resources sustainably, to diversify economies and successfully address the challenge of climate changes. It will sound suitably solemn and uplifting at the UN headquarters in New York, but the story at home in Bharat and India is solemn and deeply worrisome.

Where India’s coal-burning power plants are. Map courtesy Global Energy Observatory.

Some of the tale is of very short-term inconvenience, such as when Mumbai went without electricity for a few hours on 02 September. The business and financial media reported that “back-up generators at banks and brokerages ensured that financial business was largely unaffected” and then circulated the familiar complain that India does not generate enough electricity to meet rapidly rising demand, that a severe shortage of coal (half our 150-odd coal burning plants are reported as having no more than a week’s supply of coal) has raised fears of more widespread blackouts.

Dire tweets from a leading industrialist, Anand Mahindra, were also reported: “Dark office in Mumbai. Lights out in the whole area. The coal crisis is beginning to literally show its dark side. A threat to the India story.” This senior member of the clutch of companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange ‘A’ List underlining a threat to the ‘India story’ led the business and financial media to quickly exert psychological duress on the NDA-BJP – “any grid collapse would cast doubt on the crisis management skills of the new government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

Electricity as fundamental right and energy convenience is moreover essential in the view of Indian industry to reaching the 8% per year GDP growth threshold, which this section appears to consider the single goal of the Republic of India. Hence where energy and the generation and provision of electricity is concerned, Goyal and his team have listed eight steps their ministry will undertake: (1) to rationalise coal supplies (by which is meant, as far as I can make out, move coal fewer kilometres to nearer power plants instead of distant ones); (2) create a statutory coal regulator; (3) civil nuclear cooperation agreement (Australia mentioned for uranium); (4) surveillance at major coal mines to control coal theft; (5) hydro-electric power generation in Jammu and Kashmir (“fast track” they say); (6) environmental clearances (“government will speed up environment and forest clearances to projects”); (7) bring more generation capacity at gas-based power online; (8) clear the solar ultra mega power plant at Sambhar near Jaipur, Rajasthan (the area is a site for migratory birds and an ecological refuge).

Had we an environment regulatory system and a project appraisal and clearances mechanism that protected environment, biodiversity, natural resources and our natural heritage, points 3, 5, 6 and 8 could under no circumstance have appeared on the Ministry of Power list. But the NDA-BJP government has in its first three months taken swift steps to eases clearances for industrial and infrastructure projects. Goyal’s colleague in the cabinet, Prakash Javadekar (minister of state for environment, forests and climate change), has worked to get the MoEF&CC to loosen the norms for expansion of coal mining projects producing up to 8 million tonnes of coal a year, and to adopt a ‘cluster approach’ in clearing smaller mines in the coal-rich belts of India. The environment ministry is also – as the Rajya Sabha was told – “streamlining environmental clearance process by delegating more powers to the State level Environment Impact Assessment Authorities (SEIAAs) for granting” such clearances, and neither house of Parliament has inquired critically as to whether the states so favoured have in place the evaluating expertise and capacities of sufficient authority and independence to not clear those projects which will harm environment, biodiversity, natural resources and our natural heritage.

Poor ambient air quality in our cities is hazardous to health, and emissions from coal-burning power plants are an important contributor to urban air pollution. This chart of a New Delhi region is courtesy Asia Air Pollution Real-time Air Quality Index (AQI).

While industry and a growing urban middle class expect ‘development’ and convenience, represented mainly by uninterruptible kilowatts, and exert a disproportionate amount of pressure on the state to fulfil these desires, there is a short list of steps very different from Goyal’s which must be recognised by the NDA-BJP government and state governments. This is:

(1) There is 172,986 MW of thermal power capacity (149,178 coal, 22,608 gas and 1,200 diesel), 40,798 MW of hydro-electric, 31,692 MW of renewables and 4,780 MW of nuclear, for a total of 250,257 MW. That’s on paper, whereas the actual power generation every average day (in 2014, according to the Central Electricity Authority, which is the apex power sector planning body) has been around 135,000 MW. From every power plant to every grid and to every distribution network, the aggregate transmission and commercial losses are estimated to be 26%. Judging from the trend of 2000 onwards, India’s coal consumption would have been 710 million tons in 2013 – almost twice the consumption in 2000 (359 mt) and more than three times the consumption in 1990 (224 mt).

To have allowed 26% of the generated electricity in 2013 to be ‘lost’ amounts to wasting the coal that was burned to generate it, and this is a gigantic sum, an amount equal to the 189 mt that India consumed in 1986. Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha, Additional Secretaries R N Choubey and Devendra Chaudhry, Joint Secretaries Mukesh Jain, B N Sharma, Pradeep Kumar, Satish Kumar and Jyoti Arora, and Economic Adviser Raj Pal must practice thrift and saving instead of entertaining industry’s demands for more power plants.

(2) India has for the last year consumed crude oil at the rate of about 3.5 million barrels a day and of this astounding amount 2.5 million barrels are imported. For 2013-14 (until 31 March) India’s appetite for crude oil cost US$ 143 billion (which represented 32% of India’s total imports for the financial year, according to the Ministry of Commerce). The standard oil barrel contains 159 litres of crude oil and, according to the Society of Petroleum Engineers, a barrel of crude oil represents about 1,700 kWh of electricity. Judging from the power consumption trend from 2000, our per capita average annual electricity consumption in 2014 will be 750-760 kWh, which is about 62 or 63 units a month.

A simple schematic for a 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant that shows the inputs and pollutants. Diagram courtesy Indian Power Sector.Com

Thus a single barrel of imported (or domestically produced) crude oil contains energy enough to supply two persons for a year, at current annual averages. Such a comparison between fuels is useful to illustrate what the country’s automobile addiction costs in terms of what it takes to furnish households with electricity. About 47% of the oil is used (after refining and being turned into various petroleum products) for transport, supporting an automobile industry that has placed 17.56 million cars, 2.01 million taxis, 3.9 million jeeps, 4.24 million light motor vehicles, 1.29 million buses, 7.37 million goods carriers, 9.42 million other vehicles (tractors, three-wheelers and so on), and 115.41 million two-wheelers, on our roads to congest our towns and cities into paralysis.

The oil import bill is Rs 872,300 crore, a number that defies the citizen’s attempts to size it (it is more than ten times the wages paid through MGNREGA (about Rs 78,106 crore) for the last three years for which 235.5 million people were provided wage employment). Goyal and his officials are therefore better advised to pay attention (together with cabinet colleague Nitin Gadkari, the minister of road transport and highways) to the 119,209 state transport buses in Bharat and India in which we travelled (economically and fairly reliably, round the clock too) some 552 million passenger kilometres.

(3) This NDA-BJP government in its first three months has blundered just as much as its predecessor government did on matters that concern every citizen: the environment, energy, the provisioning of agriculture and food, and human development. At every turn Goyal’s cabinet colleagues, and in particular Arun Jaitley, minister of finance and defence, have chanted out the tiresome refrain that India will grow, must grow, must build, must consume, must produce and so on. Their obduracy in the face of evidence to the opposite – evidence that has been available in Bharat and internationally from the time they were students, certainly – is just as tiresome. Gathering ever more citizens into the club of the urban middle class will only lead to a financial and technological trap from which there is no escape.

Coal India’s share price for the last two years.

One example amongst many illustrates why, quite starkly. Since 2004, the sale of room air-conditioners has grown at about 15% per year, and the industry reported sales of over 3.5 million air-conditioners in 2013. Concerned by the demand for electricity from homes and offices fitted, over the last three years, with new air-conditioners, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (a statutory body under the Ministry of Power) set out to estimate what effect millions of new air-conditioners would have on peak electricity demand. The answer was provided by an ‘expert group on low carbon strategies for inclusive growth’ for the Planning Commission and independent analysis conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (of the USA). This study found that peak electricity demand would rise by 75,000 MW to reach 150,000 MW by 2030. That is, in 15 years the peak electricity demand alone will be 60% of today’s total power generation capacity in India!

There is no financial fix and there is no technological fix for such a trend. There is no further excuse for the NDA-BJP government and for ministers like Goyal, Jaitley, Javadekar, Gadkari (and prime minister Modi) to continue to ignore the obvious. Goyal and Jaitley both need an immediate refresher in revisiting the reasons why the marginal cost curve of any action they have announced in the last three months will rise steeply. That rise will be due to a combination of activities, and the natural consequences, which will ruinously amplify the impacts of a changing climate. Bharat cannot continue to shirk the duty – of government and of citizen – of caring first for our ‘prakruti’ (what the west has recently begun to call ecological services) and instead pursuing the ‘maya’ of continuous growth.

– Rahul Goswami

MNRE boosts solar thermal use with subsidy

June 10, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission is a major initiative of the Government of India and the state governments to promote ecologically sustainable growth while addressing India’s energy security challenge. The Mission, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, will contribute to the global effort to meet the challenges of climate change.

The first phase (till March 2013) is considered to have achieved the target. The Solar Thermal component of the JNNSM will now, until 2022, focus on promoting off-grid systems including hybrid systems to meet and/or supplement heating and cooling energy requirements and power. These systems still require interventions to bring down costs. The key challenge is to provide an enabling framework and support for entrepreneurs to develop markets. This programme will address off-grid and decentralised solar thermal application area/systems.

Fossil fuels are used for process heating, drying, distillation, water heating, space heating and refrigeration and generation of electricity. The Ministry has estimated that about 25 million households use electric geysers, consuming approximately 7,500 GWh of electricity (assuming minimum annual consumption of around 600 kWh/year/geyser) and 15 million tons a year of petroleum fuels are used in industries in thermal form at temperatures below 300°C. As about 30% of the energy consumed by industry is used for heating water, there is huge potential.

Holding our breath in India’s cities

May 10, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

On the PM 2.5 scale, India’s cities are easily amongst the world’s riskiest places in which to live

The findings by the World Health Organisation on the quality of air in India’s cities are the strongest signal yet to our government (old and new, for the results of the 2014 general election will become known on 16 May) that economic ‘growth’ is a weapon that kills citizens through respiratory tract diseases and infections.

Amongst the 124 Indian cities in the new WHO database on urban air quality worldwide, one city only is at the WHO guideline for PM2.5 and one city only is just above the guidelines for PM10. As a bloc, the quality of air in India’s cities are at alarmingly high levels above the guidelines, above Asian averages (poor as they are, and even considering China’s recklessly poor record) and above world averages.

This is not a singular matter. Already, the WHO has warned that India has a high environmental disease burden, with a significant number of deaths annually associated with environmental risk factors. The Global Burden of Disease for 2010 ranked ambient air pollution as the fifth largest killer in India, three places behind household air pollution. Taken cumulatively, household and ambient air pollution constitute the single greatest risk factor that cause ill health -leading to preventable deaths – in India.

The WHO database contains results of ambient (outdoor) air pollution monitoring. Air quality is represented by ‘annual mean concentration’ (a yearly average) of fine particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5, which means particles smaller than 10 or 2.5 microns). The WHO guideline values are: for PM2.5 – 10 micrograms/m3 annual mean; for PM10 – 20 micrograms/m3 annual mean. The two charts show just how dangerously above the WHO guidelines the air quality of our cities are.

Without urgent and stringent curbs on the consumption of fuel, Indian cities’ PM 10 measures will worsen

Half of India’s urban population lives in cities where particulate pollution levels exceed the standards considered safe. A third of this population breathes air having critical levels of particulate pollution, which is considered to be extremely harmful. “We are also running out of ‘clean’ places. Small and big cities are now joined in the pain of pollution,” commented Down To Earth, the environment magazine.

Typically, the official Indian response was to question the WHO findings (these were carried out in the same way in 91 countries, and we don’t hear the other 90 complaining) and to reject them. The reason is easy to spot. Global offender Number One for air pollution amongst world cities is New Delhi, a city that has been pampered as the showcase for what the Congress government myopically calls “the India growth story”.

Hence government scientists are reported to have quickly said that WHO overestimated air pollution levels in New Delhi. “Delhi is not the dirtiest… certainly it is not that dangerous as projected,” said A B Akolkar, a member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board.

The same recidivist line was parroted by Gufran Beig, chief project scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (which otherwise does good work on the monsoon and on climate change). He is reported as having said that New Delhi’s air quality was better than Beijing’s, and that pollution levels in winter are relatively higher in New Delhi because of extreme weather events. Beig said: “The value which has been given in this (WHO) report is overestimating (pollution levels) for Delhi … the reality is that the yearly average is around 110 (micrograms).”

The WHO database has captured measurements from monitoring stations located in urban background, residential, commercial and mixed areas. The world’s average PM10 levels by region range from 26 to 208 micrograms/m3, with a world average of 71 micrograms/m3.

PM affects more people than any other pollutant. The major components of PM are sulfate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust and water. It consists of a complex mixture of solid and liquid particles of organic and inorganic substances suspended in the air. The most health-damaging particles are those with a diameter of 10 microns or less, which can penetrate and lodge deep inside the lungs. Chronic exposure to particles contributes to the risk of developing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as of lung cancer.

Central and state governments show no inclination to join the obvious dots. These are, that with more fuels being burned to satisfy the electricity and transport needs of a middle class now addicted to irresponsible consumption, the ‘India growth story’ is what we are choking to death on.