Delhi smog and coal

India needs to urgently control Sulphur Dioxide/Carbon Dioxide (SO2-CO2) emission, given that technology to do so is available.

Acknowledging India’s increasing efforts on improving its electricity generating plants, engineering experts and technologists believe these are not enough.

The simple fact is that India, like many other emerging economies, must leave with coal-fired power plants to supply cheaper electricity to remote regions.

Policy support is emerging strongly for green energy, but coal, available in abundance in Asia, cannot be discounted.

“There is no question of shutting down the coal mines,” said a senior power industry official at the Singapore International Energy Week held last month with natural gas as the main green energy topic.

Researchers in international energy corporations have developed technologies to remove SO2 or carbon dioxide as well as clean coal technologies, said the official anonymously.

The capital city must have received a stronger message from the November smog.

India, no doubt, is being a main subject in global energy conferences, where its programme for developing renewables applauded, and natural gas, as a major option replacing fuel oil and coal, is appreciated by investors.

So, time to act New Delhi the importance of coal but in a less pollutive or much cleaner ways.

India, along with China and Indonesia and other poorly-lit countries, will has to keep in mind coal-fires for a long time. Even the related energy authorities’ annual energy mix projection is changing.

“You just cannot supply high cost electricity to the poor,” remark the expert.

Here is what International Energy Agency says in its World Energy Outlook 2015 report.

Coal has increased its share of the global energy mix from 23% in 2000 to 29% today, but the momentum behind coal’s surge is ebbing away – and the fuel faces a reversal of fortune.

India – the subject of an in-depth country focus in WEO-2015 – contributes the single largest share of growth, around one-quarter, in global energy demand.

India today is home to one-sixth of the world’s population and its third-largest economy, but accounts for only 6% of global energy use and one in five of the population – 240 million people – still lacks access to electricity.

With policies in place to accelerate the country’s modernisation and develop its manufacturing base (via the “Make in India” programme), population and incomes on the rise and an additional 315 million people anticipated to live in India’s cities by 2040, India is entering a sustained period of rapid growth in energy consumption.

Demand for coal in power generation and industry surges, increasing the share of coal to almost half of the energy mix and making India by a distance the largest source of growth in global coal use.

Oil demand increases by more than in any other country, approaching 10 mb/d by the end of the period.

India also steps up its deployment of low-carbon technologies, although uncertainty over the pace at which new large dams or nuclear plants can be built means strong reliance on solar and wind power (areas where India has high potential and equally high ambition) to deliver on its pledge to have a 40% share of non-fossil fuel capacity in the power sector by 2030.

Meeting India’s energy needs requires a huge commitment of capital and constant vigilance as to the implications for energy security and the environment.

Pressing ahead with the overhaul of India’s energy regulatory framework is critical to secure the estimated US$2.8 trillion of investment that is needed in energy supply to 2040.

Three-quarters of this investment goes to the power sector, which needs to almost quadruple in size to keep up with projected electricity demand but which remains beset for now by high network losses and high financial losses among the local distribution utilities.

The expansion of coal supply makes India the second-largest coal producer in the world, but also, already by 2020, the world’s largest coal importer, overtaking Japan, the EU and China.

Oil production falls well behind the growth in demand, pushing oil import dependence above 90% by 2040. End of WEO2015 report. fii-news.com