Each week, we will profile a Climate Challenge India member, and keep you up to date on how they are engaging with climate change. Our first member of the week is the ‘Why New Coal’ Campaign.
|
‘Why New Coal’, is a campaign started by Switch ON, an Indian grassroot climate action project which aims at spreading the urgency of the message, and inspires leadership for action on climate change. ‘Why New Coal began as an initiative to raise awareness and promote action towards a sustainable energy future. This campaign questions India’s over reliance on fossil fuels, and asks why new coal fired power plants are in the pipeline, when renewable alternatives exist. India is home to 17% of the world’s population, and accounts for 3.5% of the world’s energy consumption. The country currently generates about 700 billion kWh of electricity, but this caters only to one thirds of the population. There is a need to increase electricity generation capacity by five times, from 160,000 MW to 800,000 MW by 2031, if the country is to provide ‘electricity to all’. So far, energy, with a heavy reliance on fossil fuels, has been at the core of our development process. Three fourths of India’s electricity is generated from coal – a major contributor to global warming. Even as much as two thirds of India’s carbon dioxide emissions come from burning of coal. In addition, the Planning Commission charts the country’s future energy production to come primarily from coal, and the government of India has already approved of 213 new coal power plants over the next 8 years. |
How can Membership of the CCI platform make a difference to what you are doing? To build political will and encourage governments to take action for energy solutions beyond fossil fuels, we need to build a grassroots movement. Our team is putting together a documentary on coal, and a photographic exhibition of coal’s social and environmental costs. Membership to CCI will give us a platform to use these advocacy tools in making people aware about their surroundings, and take action in their daily lives. |
When the ‘Why New Coal’ campaign started to look deeper into the issue, they realized that the following issues make it clear, that making coal the backbone of our economic development will make the country a major contributor to dangerous climate change:
 |
 |
- We face a climate emergency, and stand to be seriously affected by climate change. In such a situation, we must aim at sustainable and equitable development based on low carbon technologies – not coal.
- India has only 30-40 years of extractable coal, which we mine in an extremely unsustainable and unscientific manner. We are also importing close to 12% of our coal.
- Coal comes with massive social costs – serious health hazards, displacement and social unrest, environmental and material and relocation costs and destruction of critical water and land resources. These costs are overlooked while calculating the cost of coal-based electricity, and are the reason why coal is still economically feasible over renewable energy.
- What options do we have? According to experts, the country needs to adopt a path of sustainable energy development, improve energy efficiency and conservation, develop and deploy renewable energy, and modernize and expand the ‘smart’ grid.
On a mission to make a point, and address these concerns, Switch ON, also initiated the India Climate Ride. Two young cyclists, Vinay Jaju and Huub Dekkers teamed up to ride across India, from Kolkata to New Delhi through Agra and India’s coal belt. The team got people to participate in the climate ride in each city, and met up with officials to get a better understanding of this complex issue. While many officials acknowledged that climate change was a serious threat, they did not see an immediate alternative to coal under the business as usual model of development.
Officials are currently able to take the back-foot on coal and energy issues because there are as yet no holistic studies on the external costs of coal and its inclusion in models of costing.
The ‘Why New Coal’ campaign was an attempt to shake peoples’ sense of complacency about the climate crisis, and highlight the fact that coal is at the core of the issue.
 |
Following these insights, organizers Vinay Jaju and Ektha Kothari believe that studies that will make India’s sustainability path clear would include detailed documentation of India’s coal reserves, and the external costs of coal-based electricity. Switch ON – in the pipeline: upcoming outreach programmes are in the form of a documentary film by Ekta Kothari on the climate ride and interviews with various energy experts; a photo-exhibition charting the journey through India’s coal belt; a project to deploy clean energy (with a focus on biomass and biogas) in rural India; and an ongoing youth outreach programme. |
For more information and updates visit: http://switchon.org.in/India/ and www.whynewcoal.com
Leave a Reply