Big energy challenges ahead, renewables only option

Bengaluru: By 2050, India will have the world's largest population, adding 400 million to its present population of 1.24 billion. But even now, over 50 million homes in the country don't have access to basic electricity. With statistics like this, an energy crisis seems imminent.

Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh discussed India's climate challenges in a discussion titled 'Climate Change and India's Energy Policy" at the National Institute of Advanced Studies here on Monday evening.

Although he discussed stepping up India's nuclear programme and turning the focus onto renewable power sources like solar and wind energy, Mr Ramesh did not dismiss the importance of coal.

“We cannot escape dependence on coal for the foreseeable future and the best we can do is to minimise its environmental costs. What India needs is radical new thinking, on renewables, especially on solar energy," he said.

“India's performance on the nuclear front has been disappointing. From the point of view of climate policy, it is ideal but sanctions imposed after the 1974 Pokhran explosion have severely handicapped the expansion of the programme," he said.

However, there has been one extraordinary development. "India is the second country in the world to have a commercial scale fast breeder reactor running on a mix of plutonium and uranium oxides," he added.

Mr Ramesh's talk, which was close to 90-minute long, drew parallels with countries like Germany and Brazil.

"In Germany, What has given renewables new momentum is the decision of Chancellor Angela Merkel to completely phase out Germany's present nuclear power generating capacity. Around 30% of its electricity supply comes from solar and wind energy."

Brazil, on the other hand, derives almost 80% of its electricity from hydel sources and accounts for around 2% of world greenhouse gas emissions, as compared to India's 6%.

"India's share has doubled over the last two decades," he said. Hydel projects are non-polluting, but pose great challenges as well. "Large-scale displacement of people becomes inevitable when it comes to the construction of storage dams," said Mr Ramesh.

"An excessively engineering approach to hydel resource planning has cost us dearly and it is time we adopt a whole new perspective if we are to build public confidence and stem the tide of public protests."