Infrastructure

KEY POINTS

·         India’s biggest challenge in energy sector is to square the circle between the government’s commitment to provide universal access to affordable and reliable energy, on one hand, and the imperative to weaken the linkage between economic growth, energy demand and environmental degradation, on the other.

·         The former requires the securing of ‘dirty’ fossil fuels. The latter a focus on ‘clean’ renewables.

·         India’s commitments to International agreements such as Paris climate deal further offers no time to develop now and clean up later.

How to manage?

·         It can be tackled by establishing an integrated planning process.

·         It must factors in the implications of decisions concerning fossil fuels on renewables and vice-versa.

·         It must also enable the fulfilment of short-term objectives without compromising longer-term goals.

·         The short-term challenge is to correct the imbalances in the energy value chain, to minimise avoidable losses and to create a unified energy market.

·         For example, surplus generating power capacity, but approximately 40% of the country still faces power shortages and/or has no access to electricity.

·         There are leakages across the transmission and distribution chains.

·         The medium- to long-term challenge is to redesign and restructure the institutions of energy governance to enable and facilitate holistic energy planning and an integrated energy market.

·         As a first step in that direction, the government should consider legislating an omnibus ‘Energy responsibility and Security act’.

·         Cities are the reasons for surging energy demand and air pollution.

·         The government should devolve energy administration of cities to autonomous and constitutionally safeguarded ‘city energy ombudsmen’.

·         These ombudsmen should be empowered to tackle issues related to energy efficiency, demand conservation, waste management, urban redesign and transportation, and to develop and implement focused, small-scale and distributed solutions. 

·         The govt. would also have to invest in the supportive infrastructure (for example, grid system, charging network, etc), regulations (for example, standardised protocols), skills and innovation.

·         Given the long lead times involved in transiting from one energy system to another, it needs a ‘bridge’ fuel. Natural gas is that fuel. 

·         A Gujarat modelled state-wide pipeline grid must be available to the whole nation to have a smooth transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy.

·         A detailed study on what will be required to shift from the incumbent fossil fuel energy system to a ‘clean energy’ system based on ‘horizon’ technologies would be a right step in realizing India’s commitments.  

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Please review.