India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green(nytimes.com) |
India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green(nytimes.com) |
When 25% of your country has no electricity at all, you get to imagine parts of your grid from the ground up. If there's an expectation of load-shedding and your grid doesn't have to be at a 100% in all places, you have room to make mistakes. Most importantly, if the renewables aren't replacing but rather adding to your energy generation capacity, you don't have to fight entrenched fossil fuel businesses and associated regulatory capture to get started.
In many ways it's similar to how telephony spread in the developing world. They skipped landlines entirely and went straight to GSM.
I'm terribly excited about renewables in parts of Africa and the rural areas in South Asia. My family is originally from Bangladesh. The local grid is so unreliable in rural areas and Chinese solar equipment so cheap that most of my family members who live in villages just bought a solar installation instead of waiting around for the utilities to run wiring.
And also how banking/payment is spreading in Africa: mobile-to-mobile, skipping credit cards entirely.
For instance, if I deposit money, do I receive interest? What happens to my funds if the phone company goes bankrupt? Are there similar regulations to banks?
Way ahead of the rest of Europe, this probably was early 2000 or 2001.
The current narrative is that India desperately needs coal and our coal is the cleanest, so we need to dig it up [1] and sell it to them to help fight climate change, because otherwise they're going to get 'dirtier' coal from somewhere else. If you disagree, then you believe that Indians don't deserve electricity.
And this isn't a strawman, this is almost verbatim what's being said in Parliament. The cognitive dissonance with our current PM is strong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_by_country http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/12/02/india-solar-power-pl...
The point it tries to make is that - the demand exists, the challenge is the govt and the policy makers.
One other point made in the same video is at the end by Prime Minister Modi - we need tech transfer from the US. Solar and nuclear . India is probably the only non-NPT country to be authorised by the US Congress for civilian nuclear technology sale.
But all bets are off now. One does not know how the current regime will operate due the "coal is best" rhetoric.
Of course, Tesla might still move to India given the repartee between Anand Mahindra (of Mahindra motors) and Elon Musk yesterday!
Apparently, the transmission & distribution network for evacuation is overburdened already. This results in plants running below their rated capacities.
The only thing that makes a difference is recycling.
Is that really true ?
I was under the impression that the very best incinerators (what nordic countries use for garbage disposal as well as cities like Zurich, etc.) had carbon capture mechanisms ...
Is that not true ?
You are mostly burning products that were made using renewable sources of carbon. Burning plastic is an exception, but the carbon footprint of plastic is small, compared to coal and oil used for heating, electricity, and transportation.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-burning-garbage-for-electr...
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...
No, nuclear power is simply too expensive. In less than a decade, even wind and solar will be cheaper.
There's the political logistics of getting the fuel, figuring out how and where to dispose of the fuel, the NIMBY problem with plant locations and the fact that in general its politically very unpopular.
India required US solar panel manufacturers to source cells from locally, which was challenged by US in WTO and subsequently awarded in it's favour. So it's not just India is moving forward with green energy in spite of 'unfair-share' in global climate policies but also moving against the hurdles imposed specifically targeting it's green energy movements.
India and quite a number of other countries e.g. China play this game all the time with industries. Look at what Apple went through for example to establish a presence in India.
The whole region can benefit. India can be a beacon of peace and use it to stabilize the region and become a leader.
It's disingenuous to insist that India should lower their power consumption, considering they currently consume only 1/15 as much as the US per capita: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?contex...
Surprised this isn't being covered more.
This decision is basically it for Trump supporters for the rest of his term. Everything else e.g. the wall, infrastructure spending, budget cuts, repeal Obamacare etc. all require Congress who will never have the votes to pass anything in both Senate and House.
When you think about it he almost for political reasons had to pull out.
The gp is, to me at least, making a point about the nytimes.
India, like all countries, can do whatever on earth they want. Just like Trump could've stayed in the agreement, behind the scenes done absolutely nothing for the environment (like he is now) and there would've been a lot less criticism.
The fact he didn't choose this option tells you everything. It was a political decision only.
/s
US 6,668.79 MtCO2e
India 2,432.18 MtCO2e
2010 figures, so India will be a bit closer the US by now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
They've just scaled slightly back on a massive coal consumption plan they implemented in the last few years. Nice, but hardly worth any recognition in the shadow of the damage they have already done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-1ohbRDrE
Green doesn't automatically mean better, and dirty does not mean coal and fossil fuels. It is how the technology is used. He argues alternative energy leads to deforestation, destruction of habitats, and deaths from vegetable oil which otherwise could be used to prevent some starvation.If you accept these things then alternative energy becomes extremely selfish by putting the burden out of your cities.
It's a good interview I hope you guys check it out.
Yeah thanks I'll pass.
Source: Metallurgical engineering background
I've never understood given how decent Australia through the CSIRO has been at commercialising innovation why we never invested more in the renewable energy sector.
Digging up coal to fight climate change is just silly, and I doubt that flies anywherre.
Well, it's trying really hard [0] to fly here in Australia.
I personally think that the USA can achieve its goal without the Paris Treaty through personal responsibility of the states, and independent initiatives through counties, and cities. That type of independent resolution is necessary for long term improvement at the grassroots level.
The US, I don't think, can get to the level of European in terms with climate, unless the US, and its states stop being complacent, and reliant on the Federal government.
We also take into account that energy production is about large capital investments that aren't looking at tomorrow, but a decade or two ahead at the minimum. Building a new coal plant today isn't a bad idea because it'll be way to expensive to run in its first year, but because it'll be less and less attractive as time goes by, and will probably have its life cut short.
This is why on one hand, Trump's decisions aren't necessarily that hard hitting in the long run as long as the people building plants can expect his decisions today to be a historical aberration. It's the long run trendline that is important, and we can tell about that by what other stakeholders do.
That said, I'd not put much faith in most states caring about climate change individually. There's plenty of states that are deep red and where most energy today still comes from coal, and where candidates don't even bother mentioning an energy stance: Elections are about protecting religion and policemen and lower taxes. It's not that the states are relying on the federal government on the environment: If there's a mention of the environment, it's something like 'The EPA is too tough on our farmers'. This was a real talking point in Missouri's last election for governor, and guess what? the candidate that was in favor of letting farmers dump more chemicals into rivers won.
The federal government can force those states to make changes, but they'll have to be dragged kicking and screaming. It's good to have some states that lead the charge on this, but it's can't be the main way to do this. If this is decided state by state, the Midwest will be mostly powering itself with coal for decades.
huh? If the 4 million people of Oklahoma don't take "personal responsibility" for polluting the atmosphere we all pay the price not just them.
The absolute amount is not very useful since you have uneven binning: the size and population of countries varies dramatically.
You need to look at percentages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/14/technology/india-cochin-sola...
See here: http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...
U.S. generated, per 2014 data, 1612 TWh from Coal and 1272 TWh from Gas. China generated 3681 TWh from Coal and 91 TWh from Gas.
Compare this to India, which generated a mere 800 TWh from Coal and 89 TWh from Gas.
And this when India has more than 4 times the population of US and according to some estimates, unverified, more population than China.
A country having less output compared to more developed countries isn't surprising, nor the issue.
How valuable is knowing population size in order to predict coal usage?
Wonder how Indians do a damage to the enviornment, by having the lowest per capita emissions on planet.
FYI - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
As expected, much more favorable terms were renegotiated to get India on board; India now gets to grow their CO2 emission as a function of GDP. A simple extrapolation of this shows they'll double their already huge CO2 output by the end of the decade, far surpassing the US.
Made the deal a lot easier to sign.
Also, The Indian govt has a moral obligation to give it's citizens the basic amenities like power to the houses. They have been parallelly using coal and renewables to do it, now the cost of solar per unit is lesser than coal, so it's planning to cut down on coal.
Why is this a problem? India has 4x the population...
You have to look at the trends. India has radically changed directions in the last few years, and we can expect in the coming years it will change even more.
"Contesting Trump's claims of 'billions and billions and billions' of foreign aid to India, the TOI report noted that total foreign aid to India in 2015 was only $3.1 billion, with US aid to India only around $100 million. These figures are further expected to drop down to $34 million in 2018.
It is interesting to note that India buys $100 million worth of California almonds alone every year, besides billions in armaments from the US."
As with all initial debugging steps, try in incognito and see if you have the same behavior.
Quid pro quo.
How the treaty will get Oklahoma to take personal responsibility is beyond me.
If every other country follows the Paris accord, and many US states, it really won't matter as much what Oklahoma does.
The OP's point is still reasonable in terms of both absolute magnitude as well as per-capita, in that India, as a developing country and yet one of the most populous countries on the planet, consumes far less energy than developed states and is not as immediate a threat to life as we know it on a global basis, such as the US is. Indian policies towards coal consumption, no matter how progressive they can get, cannot hope to match the immediate impact their counterparts in the US can achieve today (and choose not to), and the current US administration does not really have grounds to point fingers elsewhere.
What part of this is comparing India to India?
https://www.platts.com/latest-news/coal/newdelhi/indias-coal...
That's really the tipping point for solar - if it can provide a better return then coal plants. It's getting close, but the significant thing is that solar scales so much better then coal because you can build it anywhere - minimal environmental impact statements, no real supply lines other then grid access, minimal staffing and maintenance. If a straight up solar farm can provide a reliable return on investment over coal power, then no one is going to bother building coal plants any longer unless tax-breaks rain from the heavens (which they might).
And the kicker is very much that scalability aspect - solar doesn't even need to provide much of a better return then coal plants to beat them, it just needs to be deployable in such volume that the obvious investment strategy becomes "build solar".
And we're getting there - fast.
States NEED to take responsibility. If we are to change as a nation we need to stop looking at the globe and do a bit of introspection so that we can change internally. Otherwise if states are left out of the equation then the problem of climate change can never be solved.
While the federal government can possibly do that, and it is a huge possibility, trying to get the states to change at the grassroots is of far greater impact, and efficiency, as that is the Number 1 problem that USA faces. Not a lack of federal imposition, but a lack of grassroots understanding in America. And the one thing Americans hate perhaps the most is being told what to do by men in suits.
*https://www.ibef.org/exports/agriculture-and-food-industry-i...
This sort of argument is exactly why I see environmentalism as anti-human at its heart.
But I'm not at all sure it's true of the majority of environmentalist organisations and parties.
I think there is as much of a disconnect between green voters and the desires of green politicians and lobbyists, as there is between the interests of Trump voters and Trump's interests.
It's fairly common to hear green orgs denouncing industrialisation, economic growth, free trade, etc. In New Zealand, the Green Party was in part founded by literal Communists, left adrift and unfunded after the fall of the USSR.
To summarise, I think that most people who think they are supporting what you said - a high standard of living in a sustainable manner - are actually supporting anti-capitalists.
He did it for economic reasons and most of the renewable energy produced in the Statss are from red states. We have to invest in transmission lines and continue the PTC if we want to continue being #1 in Wind and these are both bipartisan issues. Just not very important to either party right now
I remember the first electric car, hailed as a true step forward, that was subsequently killed. Go to Santa Monica beach patrol stations and see all of the failed electric car station plug poles that were sawed off and tossed onto a heap to rot. The end result of an economy that pushed SUVs over what we are currently seeing. And yes, for the most part those status junkies traded their SUVs for Priuses.
We are asked to conserve water when the wasteful farms and elites use more water than every citizen combined and our efforts (I recall as a youth, if it's yellow let it mellow as an allusion to not flushing if you don't have to) are literally a drop in the bucket. I remember my dad putting a brick in our toilet tank to reduce overall water capacity in an effort to 'do our part'; all the while our neighbors ignored the lawn watering rules (like our officials watered their estate grounds).
San Fernando Valley stopped watering or used minimal recycled water on the median's vegetation and trees in "an effort to save water". They even went so far to print signs everywhere along these plots and all advertising spaces (bus stop, billboard, etc) which have their own environmental impact that's conveniently ignored. End result is that all of these well matured trees died and cracked or burned in the subsequent year's end.
We also get billboards about food waste costing us water (one about eggs is fairly prevalent) which goes back to ignoring the actual major sources of waste.
The Nestlé corporation was allowed to do this: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36161580 And yet we are expected to 'do our part' to help a corporation's profits?
Lastly, recycling. We are asked at every turn to recycle amd separate garbage to an extent, yet there is no punishment for recycling thieves like in New York. So we taxpayers fund recycling efforts, containers, centers and trucks only to have the proverbial gold stolen each night by thieves. I stopped sorting my garbage when I was driven to the brink being woken every trash day at 3 am by opportunists raiding every can thoroughly. I had compassion until then. Most who still do have not had first hand experience in their ivory gated communities.
In summation, the best laid plans if the misguided bleeding hearts.
But you can also point to stuff that did work. Early electric cars were failures, but there are lots of them on the road now.
Also, it seems you have no real criticism of Priuses. You just want to complain about them. Why? They work fine.
The main issue with them is the ever present illusion that electricity comes from unicorn farts (hyperbole yes). Talk of real solutions must include compromises such as methods which harm the environment less than the benefit they provide.
Shoving manufacturing, mining etc to China and other nations with zero regard for environmental impact needs to end. Yes all of your iPhone packaging might be 99.999 recycled materials but at what ultimate ignored cost. Burning circuit boards in the street is rarely addressed.
Even just the famed silicon valley companies which promote this socialist garbage cannot be burdened with opening their main company location in a reasonable nowhere town as that would hurt their elite status symbol. Better to force all of your wage slaves to commute or live in overpriced renting situations than to have your private car service shuttle a handful of rich executives as needed.
You should give Guinness a call. They think the oldest living person is 117, and you should have that beat by at least 15 years.
The only catch is that the payments banks, which do not offer loans and several other facilities offered by full fledged rivals, are not allowed to accept deposits beyond Rs 1 lakh in bank accounts, which will have the same number as your mobile number. Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said that the higher interest rate and freebies such as life insurance of up to Rs 1 lakh was an "introductory offer" and the rates would go down in a falling interest rate environment
Ahh, nm. This is just a fixed amount of cash they hand you for switching banks not a full time interest rate.
Central banks also tend to (sometimes sensibly) clamp down on services that are closer to core (profitable? :P) banking services like interest & loans, so telco wallets with this functionality built in house are much rarer.
Besides, none of you have even bothered to look at the figures. India's current coal consumption is less than 30% of the US, for a population 4-5 times larger. Even if we double our coal consumption, it wouldn't outstrip US at their current levels.
Can you explain to me how this works?
Yes. Area doesn't consume energy, people do. Otherwise Russia would be the most eco-friendly country in the world, and something like Luxembourg should be considered an abject failure of environmental policy.
CO2 does not care about which piece of land it gets emitted from: As far as the main subject under discussion goes (in contrast to, say, air quality), pollution per square foot is an utterly meaningless metric.
If we could point to a plume of obviously-warmed land downwind of a city, it'd be a much easier sell to the layman.
You can for example combine EU into one entity and say they pollute a lot. Or split china/india/US into 50 countries and say they don't contribute much individually.
In effect favouring being born lucky.. in any random sample of the world population you have 33% chance of being born in just 2 countries . Do these people get fair representatation in any international forum ? It is either 1 vote per country or powerfull ones have all of it.
Landmass also is not effective measure . You will end up with Australia, Canada and Russia driving the agenda
Pop density has more to do with ability to grow food and energy efficiency of food consumption - comparing pop density and talking about over population has to factor that in saying china and india are overcrowded is not a sensible argument(they are over populated but not to extent people think) .
We need fresh perspective on how we see the world , arbitrary national boundaries , Mercator projections and biased schooling makes our world view very distorted
All of the above applies to the US as well . State borders are arbitrary. People in Pop dense centers like california do not get even the 10th of the representatation as say Wyoming.
California could be 8th largest country in terms of economic output and has a pop larger most countries in the world yet people living there do not have a say proportional to their impact in domestic or international politic is that fair ?
Airtel's offer may be temporary, and interest rates rarely go to 7%, but the point is that there's always a competition on interest rates.
India's inflation and nominal interest rates are both higher, which means you lose more if you forgo interest. In a hypothetical country with 5% inflation and a 5% interest rate, if you forgo interest, you lose 5% every year. In a country with 2% inflation and 2% interest rate, you lose only 2%.
How can other countries do that?
You are correct environment is not reason we should be worried . it is about the people, not the planet. 99% of the all species are already extinct one more large scale extinction event while terrible is not the end of life on this planet and the planet has seen far worse, life will survive long after we are gone. Sea level raise will adversely 60 % of the human population who live in the coast many of whom are poor. Changing weather patterns and climate change will affect the developing countries far more than first world countries who will have the resources to manage the effects . There are whole island countries that will disappear within the turn of the century. This is why developing countries are in very touch spot, they will need to balance both development of basic services and also find a meaningful solution to the problem.
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/workshops/finance/pdf/Verdel...
"We find that deviations from the covered interest rate parity condition (CIP) imply large, persistent, and systematic arbitrage opportunities in one of the largest asset markets in the world. Contrary to the common view, these deviations for major currencies are not explained away by credit risk or transaction costs."