There were four center-page articles on COP29 conference
held in BAKU in a major newspaper, pouring into the looming global warming
crisis, the need for developed countries to spend more on aid to help
developing nations adopt climate change mitigation technologies, and how
we could be entering an era of NCQG - New Collective Quantified Goals.
One of them talked about India's major role in spending as much as 15000 crore
rupees - about 0.06% of its GDP on renewable energy!!
That we were about to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius rise (we
are at 1.49 degrees C now) post commencement of the industrial age was
mentioned in passing. And 3.1 degrees Celsius temperature rise could be
breached if we continue along this trajectory. Barely a few months ago we
talked about 1.5C rise as a defendable goal if only we went on a full court
press. It is unfortunate that we have an underpinning premise is that we
have the answers, if only we had the will to deploy them; but the premise is
simply not true. One more reason to state the obvious. We have been
green washed. This time from Baku.
Let us consider Renewable Energy, which decarbonizes the
energy sector. More than a decade ago, Photovoltaics (PV) reached a cost
point where the installation costs per rated MW was on par with or less than
new thermal power plants. Wind energy was not far behind. In India,
investments in renewable energy outpaced conventional power for more than a
decade, with approximately 70GW being added in thermal and 120 GW in renewable
energy. Renewable Energy accounts for 46% of installed capacity.
Yet in terms of energy generated thermal power is still a whopping 75% of the
energy mix. Renewable energy is seasonal (especially wind) and not 24x7 -
Solar. The ratio of delivered to installed capacity for renewable energy
is about 30%. Transmission losses are 2to 5% per hundred KM - so to put all
solar in the deserts of Rajasthan is not practical. To deliver 100%
Renewable energy leveraging on energy storage while increasing capacity to
compensate for the intermittency of renewable energy, one needs to triple the
current renewable energy footprint. We will struggle to find the land for
that. And battery-based solutions come at a prohibitively high cost (will
quadruple the energy costs) and comes with its own carbon footprint which may
take years to erase. Pumped storage is often talked about. It
needs two reservoirs at different heights in reasonable proximity, with enough
watershed to store the 1000s of MW of energy that needs to be stored.
Indias current hydro capacity is 10% of its total footprint and only a small
fraction is amenable to pumped storage. Pumped storage comes with massive
ecological costs in terms of deforestation, and impact on aquatic
life.
In-spite of a decade of concerted action we are stuck with
75% of energy on tap coming from thermal power. This conundrum is not
unique to India, USA, China, much of Asia, and portions of Europe share this
problem. The exception is those blessed with 24x7 wind (Netherlands and
Denmark) or those with massive legacy nuclear energy (France and Ukraine), that
have breached the 50% ceiling of non-fossil energy-based power. There is
only one water-tight solution - that is nuclear energy, which is 24x7, minimal
carbon footprint except during construction, and comes with a safety risk which
is manageable. Stray radiation from mining for coal or lithium exceeds
that from standard nuclear plants. Small nuclear reactors (SMR)are even
more manageable when it comes to disposal of waste. If the world is
serious about climate change developed and developing nations should be forging
a partnership in installing nuclear power plants, including SMRs which can be
deployed quickly. And this should have been one of the main talking
points.
Moving to transportation, EVs that are not directly tied to
solar panels rely on grid power which is now 75% thermal across much of the world.
The batteries come with its own manufacturing carbon footprint which is much
higher than conventional vehicles. The energy storage materials have a 3%
extraction efficiency, some are mined at the expense of rainforests using
primitive methods. The total emissions footprint of battery manufacturing
is estimated to grow to One Giga ton of CO2 per year - it is estimated that for
a 100 KW powered EV (like a tesla) it would take 70000 KM of driving to
neutralize manufacturing footprint. Yet there is a case to be made for
EVs if the energy used to charge is 100% renewable. Two wheelers
and three wheelers which take a few hours to charge and readily done in
daylight could be 100% emissions free, and pollution free, if they are backed
by dedicated solar energy. For a 70KWh hour car it requires 10 KW of PV
or at least two thousand square feet of space and eight to twelve hours of time
to charge and finding that space is not easy in urban settings. The easiest
answer for India is that it makes sense to electrify the two-wheeler segment
and that is part of the policy prescription. For the rest it is a
struggle to electrify. Increasing the percentage of biofuel, especially
from waste, is the best mitigative answer unless one switches to nuclear energy
instead of thermal power, which is clearly decades away.
If the challenges are that stark, and immediately
implementable solutions are that difficult, then the question is how societies
can strive to mitigate climate change.
Rooftop Energy. This could include solar panels on
rooftop or sunshades in every home, biowaste to energy in rural areas using
small gensets, backed by tax breaks or subsidy from the government.
The goal should be that at least 40% of domestic energy needs in rural
and urban areas is met by locally generated renewable energy. This
certainly would pose challenges to grid stability and thermal power plant reliability,
but this can be managed.
Optimizing India's farming: Farming from existing
irrigated lands or those areas blessed with abundant rainfall needs to be
maximized and made scientific to maximize yields. India has already
closed the gap in wheat and is catching up in paddy. Fifty percent
of India's farmlands are not irrigated by rivers. Large scale dependence
on ground water is not sustainable or energy efficient. India needs to
switch to a combination of drip irrigation with millets, horticulture and agro
forestry in such areas to maximize rural income reduce energy footprints in
agriculture. In a prevailing democracy such as India, such rules cannot
be imposed from top, but there needs to be incentives from the government and
markets. About 20% of horticultural produce is lost because of lack of cold
storage. The use of renewable energy (evaporative cooling) can be a game changer
and needs to be developed for small farmers. Finally agro-waste to
ethanol needs to be developed so that Biofuels are sourced not just from water
guzzling crops like sugar cane but actual agro-waste. The farmer apart
from being part of the food supply chain can become part of the energy supply
chain with the right incentives for rooftop / pump head solar, and waste to
energy or fuel plants. By focusing on yields that reduce the area that
needs to be farmed along with agroforestry, rural land banks could be coopted
into nature-based climate change solutions with transparent policies that
directly reward the farmer.
Responsible Consumption: India is a developing country
- poverty is a lived reality. When poverty exists in combination with
caste and class divide, the loss of human dignity is morally
unacceptable. One needs to recognize that urban and rural consumption
generates jobs in all sectors. But there is a case to be made for
responsible consumption. This includes the shift away from larger fuel
guzzling cars, frequent upgrades of electronic gadgets which have large
manufacturing and transportation carbon footprints, investment in property
which carries its own construction related emissions, and flying to
destinations where surface transportation was possible to name a few.
About 10% of India's households now have first world lifestyles, and this is
driving emissions.
It is said that if all of India lived in urban settlements
such as New Delhi, then the entire population could be bottled into a small
state such as Telengana. Of course the country needs its farms and
factories. Therefore, while balancing technologies used for production of
engineering goods and apparel, or food grains and horticultural products, one
needs to ensure that land usage is kept to a minimum. If we make
substantial changes towards that end we may see more if India becoming a forest
and contributing to mitigating climate change through nature-based solutions.
Until we do all the above Greenwashing will continue.