Always wondered how over a billion people get to fulfill their energy needs. Or do they? Half the country's population still does not have access to electricity, most of the other half lives in power outages. She is also running out of oil reserves. Money put in over 70% oil imports put her economical imbalance. She is very rich in coal reserves, third largest producer in the world, but that raises environmental concerns. Nuclear power, days were spent over which in discussion in the parliament, serves only 3% of electricity needs and has no future. So, is there hope?
Renewable energy, in the form of solar and wind, is only a small part of the solution. India is one of very few countries that receives solar energy for over 300 days in the year but solar power has been well under-installed. Wind blows at good speeds in the southern states with India being the third largest producer of wind energy but there is lot more to do. Government estimates a potential of 20 GW each from wind and solar which in the end is a small fraction of the total electricity generation. What else?
Natural Gas! This source has been gaining traction globally due to its cleaner burning nature as compared to coal. But India generates only around 7% electricity from its natural gas resources. The search for natural gas overseas has increased a lot over the past years with gas pipelines being set up with Iran and Bangladesh.
Nuclear still remains to be generating less than 3% of total electricity in spite of the big plans by the government and the Atomic Energy Commission. A major setback has been reduced foreign cooperation after the nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998. Although, India has recently gone into agreements with other countries including the United States, chances of nuclear being the major source of energy in the future appears slim.
In short, India needs to first focus on getting electricity to everyone in the country and reduce power outages. This would need more generation and hence more plant installations. More coal plants mean major environmental concerns. Clean coal could be an option not only with cleaning it off ash but also finding out ways to capture CO2 and other pollution control measures. The renewable sources like wind, solar and biomass need to be utilized to maximum capacity as early as possible. And in the meantime, as much oil and natural gas that can be obtained from is a bonus.
Its not going to be easy to feed energy requirements of over a billion people in a country thats developing at a fast rate, but government decisions need to be backed by good analysis, planning and investment for the future!!
