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SCIENCE
India uses the sun to battle climate change
India is turning its fight against global warming into a
win-win proposition. While making it clear that it
neither would nor should accept legally binding targets
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the country
has now unveiled the world's most ambitious plan to harness
solar energy.
Coupled with the anticipated surge in nuclear power,
the plan can be expected to supply dependable electricity
to a billion-plus population without further endangering
the world through a massive increase in these emissions.
"I'd like to make it clear and categorical that we are
simply not in a position to take on legal binding on emission
reduction targets," Minister of State for Environment
and Forests Jairam Ramesh said from the same podium
where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke while
on a visit to India last month.
But, speaking inside an energy-efficient building in
nearby Gurgaon, Ramesh made clear
how India was going to turn the combat
against climate change into a winwin
proposition.
"It is not true to say that India is
running away from mitigation of greenhouse
gas emissions," the Minister said.
"India has been saying that its primary
focus will be adaptation (to climate
change), but there are specific areas
where we are already in a policy framework
that envisages mitigation which
means actual reduction of emissions."
India has an ambitious National Action Plan on climate
change, which outlines eight missions through which the
country will combat what UN Secretary General Ban
Kimoon has described as the "defining challenge of our age".
The first of these missions, giving a massive boost to
solar electricity generation, is now almost final. The 40-year
plan has clearly demarcated milestones that will not only
improve India's energy security and make cheap power
available to millions but also drastically reduce India's
greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy generated.
The objectives of the National Solar Mission are to
establish India as a global leader in solar energy through:
• 20,000 MW of installed solar generation capacity by
2020; 100,000 MW by 2030; and
• 200,000 MW by 2050;
• Solar power cost reduction to achieve grid tariff parity
by 2020;
• Achieve parity with coal-based thermal power generation
by 2030; and 4-5 GW of installed solar manufacturing
capacity by 2017. This will save 1.05 billion litres of
diesel, a billion litres of kerosene and 350 million litres
of fuel oil per year by 2020.
18 | YATRA | JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2011
BY JOYDEEP GUPTA
This is to be supplemented by large private initiatives,
like the one in the famous Shirdi temple complex in
Maharashtra. It turned to solar power last month for all
energy requirements for its vast kitchen feeding over
20,000 people a day. Temple officials have said it is the
world's largest solar-powered steam generation system.
Indian policymakers are now acutely aware that the
country is at the forefront of those bearing the brunt of
climate change. According to the government's last Annual
Economic Survey, the country is now being forced to spend
about 2.6 percent of its gross domestic product to deal
with falling farm output, more frequent and more severe
droughts, floods and storms, and a rise in the sea level.
Greenhouse gas emissions have raised the level of carbon
dioxide in the world's atmosphere to over 375 parts
per million (ppm) from about 250 ppm at the start of the
Industrial Age. The result is a rise in temperature that has
been estimated at half a degree Celsius
over the last 100 years in the case of
India, and a sea-level rise of 1.3 mm
that are already having their effects.
The largest single source of greenhouse
gas emissions is the coal-based
thermal power plant. This puts India
in a quandary, because the country
clearly needs to drastically increase its
power generation - over 600 million of
its people are still outside the electricity
grid, and the rest get undependable
supplies. Coal is the one traditional
energy source that India has in abundance, and can also be
the bulwark of the country's energy security, reducing its
dependence on oil imports.
India is going ahead with its massive thermal power expansion
plans while making sure the new plants are of the "supercritical"
category that emit less carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas. At the same time, it is promoting the sun - the
other abundant energy source in the country - in a big way.
Apart from solar energy, "energy efficiency is a very fundamental
driver of our economic strategy," Ramesh pointed
out recently. He has also expressed pique because India has
not got enough credit in international forums "for the enormous
work it is doing on forestry". It is one of the few tropical
and sub-tropical countries where the forest cover is not
only being maintained but is actually going up.
While the international community is prepared to pay
countries to combat deforestation, there is no fiscal incentive
for countries that are increasing their forest cover, as
India has been pointing out at least since the December
2007 Bali summit of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change.
While pressing hard for the industrialised world to pay
The High Commission of India in Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain