Coal Disillusion: An Indian Perspective
Energy is a fundamental and cross-cutting issue for development. Affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy services are a crucial input to supporting provision of basic needs such as food, lighting, use of appliances, water sanitation, essential health care, education, communication and transport.
However, with increasing urbanization, industrialization, expansion of the middle class, and development of infrastructures, energy security is the key obstacle to future sustainability and growth. each country has a unique challenge in addressing its energy needs, which is vital for the economy.
Coal Dependency
Coal is the widely used source of energy its dependency instead of new technologies and development in renewable energy sector, is increasing day by day. Use of fossil fuel may not have raised question until and unless it had an visible affect on human life. CO2 emissions have become one of the major reason of Climate change. Its high time to raise the issue but with the evolving industrialization and needs of power supply, this source of energy cannot face denial even in future uses.
In December 2015, COP21 in Paris bridged governments to reach a new direction for achieving the goal to keep the rise in global average temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, relative to the pre-industrial levels. Worldwide countries reiterated their support for plans to develop a UN-led global warming deal. The commitments made by BRICS nations in term of CO
emission is summarized in Figure 1.
This targets can be only be achieved by copoperation among BRICS countries and proper fund availability. BRICS nations took took a significant step to enhance international cooperation to facilitate access to clean energy research and technology, including renewable energy, energy efficiency and advanced and cleaner fossil fuel technology and promote investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology.
Emerging economies across the world are trying their level best to maintain a high growth rate for industrialization. Energy supply being as established parameter for the country’s economy cannot be neglected. With industrialization, there is an exponential rise in need of energy. China’s demand of coal for energy production has increased almost five times in thirty years and accounted for 73% of Asia’s consumption and almost half of coal consumption globally. Coal is the cheap source but efficient use of renewable energy can only be a safer side to combat this issue of increasing demands and decreasing supply. Bangladesh is one of the ‘Next Eleven’ emerging economies to keep with the pace it’s trying hard to become more industrialized. Being dependent on coal based energy supply its GDP also fluctuates because of the import of coal. Governments are taking initiatives in several countries since they also have signed in Paris agreement in 2015 for Climate change.


Bangladesh government has approved construction of a large-scale solar commencement and initiated programs in this direction. According to an article in Science Direct by Islam S, Khan ZR (2017) a state-owned development financial institution which is dedicated to promote/finance infrastructure and renewable energy projects in Bangladesh named ‘Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL)’ has started the solar home system (SHS) program in 2003 to ensure access to clean electricity for the electricity starved off-grid rural areas of Bangladesh. Country’s energy requirements cannot be fulfilled by other sources so it’s also being imported from India. Where they also stated that the “Major portion of this power will be generated from coal based power stations. Unfortunately, the production cost could not be kept low after the initiatives taken to quickly raise the capacity.” [2]
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim noted that countries in south and southeast Asia were on track to build hundreds of more coal-fired power plants in the next 20 years — despite promises made at Paris to cut greenhouse gas emissions and pivot to a clean energy future. China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam account for three-quarters of new coal-fired power plants expected to be built around the world in the next five years. [3]
India’s Power Initiatives and Energy Trilemma: Transforming Energy Supply
• The current policies are aimed at increasing India’s dependence on renewable sources of power. The national budget (2015) announced a fivefold ramp-up of renewable energy targets to 175 GW by 2022. This comprises of, 100GW solar, 60 GW wind, 10 GW biomass and 5 GW small hydro power capacityOut of this 100 GW solar 40 GW is planned from roof-top installations of solar panels,20 GW is planned from ultra-mega solar parks and 40 GW is planned to come from other utility-scale solar power plants
As on April 2016, the renewable power contributed more than 14% of the total power generated in the country.
India’s Power Initiatives and Energy Trilemma: Advancing Energy AccessDeendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY)
Under this scheme, the government plans to electrify all the 18,452 un-electrified villages by 2019. Out of these 11,008 villages have already been electrified as of 26 Nov. 16 (Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, 2016). It is expected that the remaining villages will be electrified much before the targeted date.
India’s Power Initiatives and Energy Trilemma: Addressing Affordability
One Nation, One Grid, One Frequency’ plan, all the regional grids are being synchronized. Synchronization of all regional grids will help in optimal utilization of scarce natural resources by transfer of power from resource centric regions to load centric regions. Further, this shall pave way for establishment of a vibrant electricity market facilitating trading of power across regions. Due to this the Available Transfer Capacity parts of South India has increased 71% to 5900 MW in December 2015 from 3450 MW as on March 2014. This has resulted in a fall of about 60–70% in the price of power (PM India, 2016).
One Nation, One Grid, One Rate’: Since the beginning of this year, there is an attempt to make electricity available all over India at the same rate.
India’s Power Initiatives and Energy Trilemma: Improving Energy Efficiency
Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs (UJALA)-
Distribution of energy efficient bulbs; As on 26th November 2016, 17.97 crore bulbs have already been distributed resulting into 2,33,42,672 MWh energy saving per year (Ministry of Power, Government of India, 2016).
Perform, Achieve, Trade (PAT)
policy for industries; Designated high energy intensity consumers receive specified energy consumption targets. Consumers that do not perform as per the given targets must purchase energy savings certificates. They can trade these certificates if they perform better than the set targets. The energy saving expected from the PAT cycle I is 6.686 mtoe (Shankar, 2015).
Other consumer based measures: There are many more schemes aimed at improving energy efficiency for the agriculture sector, large commercial buildings with high energy consumption and other specific users.
India’s Power Initiatives and Energy Trilemma: Improving Energy Efficiency
Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) Scheme
It is aimed at turning around the DISCOMs and one of its objectives is improving operational efficiency through the reduction in the aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses. The UDAY scheme targets to bring down these losses to 15% (10% for some states) in three years (end 2018–19). In 2014–15, the median AT&C loss of state utilities stood at 24.82% (Sree Ram, 2016).
India’s Power Initiatives and Energy Trilemma: Decarbonizing the Sector.
Clean energy cess on use of carbon
The `clean energy cess’, has been increased by the government, in Budget 2016–17 on February 29, from Rs 200 per tons to Rs 400. It has also been renamed the `clean environment cess’ (Aggarwal, 2016).
Making India gen-set free
The aim here is to use solar roof tops and smart grids which will transform the consumers to prosumers during the day when they will supply power to the grid and at night they will take power from the grid.
Vision of 100% Renewable Energy: Is it Possible?
Achieving a 100% renewable dependency is not as simple as it may seem. The challenge does not lie in building the capacity but rather in forming the proper regulatory environment and technical expertise in creating infrastructure which will be resilience enough to cope up with the variability of renewable energy sources. Broadly we should be institutionally prepared for following challenges to this make dream come true:
Building excellent energy storage facilities: It is not a hidden fact that renewable energy is intermittent in nature. At a given point of time renewable source can produce much more energy than the demand in the grid and vice-versa. Either case is fatal for the grid and may cause a grid collapse. In order to achieve feasible operation of the grid we need to store the excess energy produced by the renewable source which shall be fed to grid during the time when demand exceed the production to keep grid stable. The option of the pumped hydro storage is attractive but require a big investment in building the reservoir. Beside building the big reservoirs have their own well known environmental effect. To build a resilience system we need to have fast responding resources (storages in this case) to be integrated in the system that can respond to any emergency within seconds. Batteries are one of the best available options to meet the energy storage requirements. In recent times, battery capacity has increased up to 5 MW. They can be installed easily near the production hubs and can be easily integrated with the grids. Fly-wheels is another emerging technology that can serve this purpose. Government should provide funding or incentivize utilities to take up pilot projects to build experiences with these technologies. Government across globes has been providing support to their utilities to gain experience with these technologies.
Regulatory framework and operational practices: A proper regulatory framework need to be defined to facilitate smother integration of the renewable resources in the grid. Advance forecasting system, fast dispatch, reserve management are some of the issues that need to be properly dealt under the regulatory framework for sending positive signal to investors and industries. Lots of countries have already developed a 5-minute dispatch system, maintain multi-layer reserve levels, and are doing from month to up to year ahead forecasting for resources to be planned. Development of alternative technologies such as demand response provide additional fast responding flexibility in grid operations. Currently there seems to absence of efforts from regulatory bodies and utilities towards this area. Incentive and motivation need to be provided for developing framework and practices through ground experiences.
Dealing with existing conventional generation capacity: In recent past a lot of capacity addition has been achieved in conventional generation resources through investment of billions of dollars. In normal circumstances the payback period of such facilities hover around 25 years. With renewable capacity coming up in big way and preference been given to them in dispatch, there may be a situation where conventional plants may be required to operate at lower capacity which may adversely affect their return period and cause greater wear and tear.
Market Flexibility: According to Electricity Act 2003 efficient market shall be developed to allow market forces to determine the service prices. It shall be noted that marginal cost of renewable resources is almost zero; hence, when markets are cleared prices are intend to go down. This may be problematic for conventional resources to recover their cost of production. Proper market products need to be developed to support sustainability of all kind of generation resources. It is observed that different power markets across the world has developed different market products with specific support for renewable resources. Some of the markets have even evolved to introduce market products where renewable resources compete with conventional resource at par. Similar efforts must be made for developing efficient market products for Indian market.
Speculating the Indian Renewable Energy Production
An extensive adoption of renewable energy can provide India with multiple benefits: from climate resilience to achieving sustainable development goals to technology leapfrogging of rural India. Achieving a 100% RE, at least in the non-transport sector, for India may not be an impossible dream. India has already set an ambitious target of renewable energy mix in total installed capacity mix 2050. The total potential for renewable power generation in India is estimated at 1200 GWOut of which, the total installed capacity of grid interactive renewable power, in 2017, is 42.85 GW so far.

Figure 1 Trends in installed generating capcity of electricity from utilities and non-utilities in India from renewable source
Source: Energy Statistics 2017 (in GW)
The geographic distribution of the estimated potential of renewable power reveals that Rajasthan has the highest share of about 14% ( 167 GW), followed by Gujarat with 13% share ( 157 GW) and Maharashtra with 10% share ( 120 GW), mainly because solar power potential. Overall these top 10 states have approximate 90 % of share of total estimated solart energy potential (Table 1).


References
[1] Tabil S. (2017). The coal disillusion in Bangladesh & Asia, BUET, Bangladesh http://education24.net/coal-disillusion-bangladesh-asia-2/
[2] Islam, S., & Khan, M. Z. R. (2017). A Review of Energy Sector of Bangladesh. Energy Procedia, 110, 611–618.
[3] Naeen Z. (2017). Sending the wrong signals, http://www.dhakatribune.com/tribune-supplements/tribune-climate/2017/07/12/sending-wrong-signals/
[4] Dzonzi‐Undi, J., & Li, S. (2016). Policy influence on clean coal uptake in China, India, Australia, and USA. Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy, 35(3), 906–913.
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