All roads to a sustainable energy future run through India.
Its fast-growing economy, population, urbanization, and industrialization make India the key bellwether of emerging countries' ability to transition to a low-carbon future.
India’s energy demands will grow more than those of any other country on the planet over the next 20 years, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The report predicts India’s energy needs will grow at three times the global average under today’s policies. Among the factors driving the country’s economic boom are rising wages and increased consumer spending, a construction binge as more of the rural population moves to cities, increased purchases of appliances such as air conditioners, and hundreds of millions of automobiles.
As indicators of prosperity and a better standard of living for millions of people, those are positive signs but there are concerns that avoiding the kind of carbon-intensive path previously followed by other countries will require strong policies, technological innovation, and a surge in clean energy investment. If India fails to establish itself as a model for renewable energy and sustainable growth, the whole developing world could also fail Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, told the Financial Times in an interview:
“The choices made by the Indian government, by the Indian people, will affect the entire world. India is in a position today to pioneer a new model for low-carbon inclusive growth. The nerve center of climate change is what developing countries do and all roads go via India.”
India is already the planet’s third-largest energy-consuming country, and that demand. is set to grow about 35 percent until 2030, with most of it met by coal and oil. That is not expected to change much in the short term. Even under a balanced growth scenario, the country’s fossil fuel import bill is expected to triple over the next two decades.
Based on today’s policy settings, India’s combined import bill for fossil fuels is projected to triple over the next two decades, with oil by far the largest component. Domestic production of oil and gas continues to fall behind consumption trends and net dependence on imported oil rises above 90% by 2040, up from 75% today.
“India has made remarkable progress in recent years, bringing electricity connections to hundreds of millions of people and impressively scaling up the use of renewable energy, particularly solar,. What our new report makes clear is the tremendous opportunity for India to successfully meet the aspirations of its citizens without following the high-carbon pathway that other economies have pursued in the past. The energy policy successes of the Indian government to date make me very optimistic about its ability to meet the challenges ahead in terms of energy security and sustainability.”
Although solar energy currently makes up less than 4 percent of India’s electricity generation, with coal accounting for about 70 percent, solar could catch up by 2040 if India is able to balance its policy goals with real-world constraints, including a slow-moving bureaucracy. The IEA report says India has a huge potential to be a world leader in solar electricity. From the report:
By 2040, solar and coal converge in the low 30%s in the existing policies scenario, and this switch is even more rapid in other scenarios. This dramatic turnaround is driven by India’s policy ambitions, notably the target to reach 450 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, and the extraordinary cost-competitiveness of solar, which out-competes existing coal-fired power by 2030 even when paired with battery storage. The rise of utility-scale renewable projects is underpinned by some innovative regulatory approaches that encourage pairing solar with other generation technologies, and with storage, to offer “round the clock” supply. Keeping up momentum behind investments in renewables also means tackling risks relating to delayed payments to generators, land acquisition, and regulatory and contract uncertainty. However, the projections in the STEPS (existing policies) do not come close to exhausting the scope for solar to meet India’s energy needs, especially for other applications such as rooftop solar, solar thermal heating, and water pumps.
It won’t be easy or cheap, the IEC warns. Transforming from today’s policy choices to a Sustainable Development scenario would require a transition on a scale no country has achieved in history. It would also require huge advances in innovation, strong partnerships, and vast amounts of capital. From the report:
If India goes down this path, it would need to address the critical challenge of the industrial sector through efforts like more widespread electrification of processes, greater material and energy efficiency, the use of technologies like carbon capture, and a switch to progressively lower-carbon fuels. Electrification, efficiency and fuel switching are also the main tools for the transport sector, alongside a determined move to build more sustainable infrastructure and shift more freight onto India’s soon-to-be-electrified railways.
The additional capital required for clean energy technologies to 2040 in the Sustainable Development Scenario is $1.4 trillion above the level in the current policies.
But, it’s worth it.
Said Osvald Bjelland, founder and President of Xynteo, the Oslo-based sustainability consultancy, which manages India2022, a coalition of global and Indian businesses, committed to creating a new model of growth in India by 2022, the 75th year of India's independence.
India’s clean energy transition has the opportunity to become the model for developing nations around the globe This is an chance for government and private industry to collaborate on initiatives that lay the foundation for sustainable growth and lasting prosperity. India is blessed to have an extraordinary reservoir of business and public leadership talent who are committed to cleaner and brighter future.
IndustryWatch
Microsoft is using money from its existing carbon fee and climate fund to become both a customer of, and an investor in, a project run by a Swiss company called Climeworks. Using only renewable energy, Climeworks’ technology captures carbon dioxide from the air, at which point it either can be used for products such as synthetic fuels, greenhouse agriculture, and carbonated beverages, or it can be permanently stored underground in volcanic rock using a mineralization process.
Climeworks has built multiple direct air capture plants in Europe and plans to rapidly increase capacity to a scale of removing billions of tons of carbon dioxide. Said Microsoft Chief Environment Officer Lucas Joppa:
“Through Microsoft’s purchase of negative emissions from Climeworks, we will permanently remove 1,400 metric tons of carbon. Through our Climate Innovation Fund, we will provide funding for Climeworks’ first-of-a-kind commercial-scale, fully renewable carbon capture and mineralization plant in Iceland.”
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