In part of this we've seen that we have renewable energy, the significant potential compared
to our current generation, we have currently 250 to 300 Giga watts of installed power generation
capacity, and the potential realizable as of now in India for solar and wind put together
is equivalent of 400 Giga watts of power generation capacity, it's actually 1200 but if you factor
in the availability reliability factor it's about 400 which is 130% of what more than
what its current faceable, so what we are currently generating and but we say this is
okay for the next 10 to 15 years, but after that if you want to, as our economic policy
planners are contemplating if you want to reach up to world average by 2035, 2040, 2050
then our energy consumption would go by factor of 3, and renewable energies can give only
a factor of 1.3 in that, so that means at that time we may be generating only additional
1.3 from renewable sources, and 1 from current sources, so which means that we'll still have
40% of energy coming from conventional fossil fuels.
And we still won't be reaching 3 times what we are currently consuming, so what kind of
energy security we have in terms of other sources, if you look at our estimated reserves
of coal as on 31st March 2016 these are revised annually, these are part of statistics, energy
statistics produced by Mospi government of India, this is one of the ministries which
are prepares all the statistics including the energy statistics and as of 31st March
as per 2018 report we have a total of 308 billion tons of coal, and how big is this
308 billion tons?
Our annual consumption of coal for electricity generation and industrial consumption put
together is about 0.9 billion tons, so that means that if you are continuing to use coal
as of now at the same rate as what we're using then it last at least for another 300 years,
so we have 300 years of coal that's available with us including proven indicated infrared
these things depend on the classification but definitely we have significantly, significant
amount of coal which can power at the rate of 3 times of current capacity for about 50
years.
What about crude oil?
That's another fossil fuels very convenient, very necessary for our transport sector as
of now, we have Assam, Gujarat and Western offshore these places producing most of it,
and this amounts to estimated reserve of 621 million tons, and how large is 621 million
tons?
Our annual consumption of crude oil is about 240 million tons so that means that we have
only about 2.5 years, only 2.5 years of crude oil that's where we import more than 80%,
90% of our crude is coming from outside, and we don't have so much reserves of crude, compared
to our annual consumption.
Natural gas is a very desirable fuel, it can be used for lot of chemical productions and
it's also much cleaner than coal, but unfortunately our amount of reserves of natural gases 1200
billion cubic meters or which is equivalent about 3700 million tons of oil equivalent,
and that is about the annual generation of natural gas all over the world, and it's not
much because everybody would like to use more of natural gas and availability of natural
gas far out strips that demand and potential for consumption in India, so what does this
mean for us?
It means that we only have coal, we don't have crude oil, we don't have natural gas,
and this means that we have to continue to import crude oil for our motoring needs, transport
sector and we have to play all kinds of geo-politics in order to get natural gas, and both of this
once we start importing fuel from other countries we have to pay them in foreign exchange, in
dollars or euros, or maybe Chinese Yuan things, and that make that push a lot of strain on
our finances, we had a big major crisis in early 1990's in terms of foreign exchange
reserves.
Right now we don't have it, but if the situation gets out of hand then we have in importing
this fossil fuels, natural alloy in terms of power generation for the next 100, 200
years and that is what we have and we know that it's not a good source from environment
point of view, so they've been lot of studies, lot of technology developments and all this
with respect to clean coal power, so that is power generation from in a clean way because
we are aware of consequences on the environment of coal usage which we have listed as generation
of sulphur-dioxide and NOX gases, mercury emissions, arsenic emissions, radioactive
elements, and ash, in addition to carbon-dioxide which is much more than what it would be emitted
if we were to use natural gas, so all those ills are there, but unfortunately when we
look at where we can get energy from in order of fulfill our economic prosperity aspirations,
then coal is what we have.
In entirely simple world where you can buy things at a prevailing rate with complete
access we could be importing lot of natural gas but even though for the past 10, 15 years
in a sustain way we've not been successfully getting natural gas due to geopolitical considerations,
similarly for nuclear power, so things may improve in another 50 years with respect to
nuclear power once we get into that third stage of nuclear power generation cycle, but
as of now coal is our only thing and how we can generate coal is something that, how we
can generate clean electricity from coal is pressing matter both to fulfill our energy
requirements and also environmental constants.
So when we look at coal we know that one of the consequences or the short-term pollutants,
short range pollutants those which effect the immediate locals, like this ash, particulate
emissions and then mercury emissions, and sulphur-dioxide and all that, for all of which
we have conventional technologies that are already been developed and that are currently
available, commercially available the world over, that in India due to financial and other
constants because they reduce their efficiency somewhat, we have not installed many of those
measures and so all those measures will not do much more global warming, so when we look
at the environmental problems or short term, short range pollutants like conventional pollutants
and the long range long term problem like the global warming arising from CO2 emissions,
we can consider the conventional technology of pulverized coal boilers without CCS, carbon
capture and sequestration, and a more advanced integrated gasification combine cycle without
CCS, and with CCS or several options when you look at this you can see the emissions
of carbon-dioxide which is known as this carbon emission intensity
reduction, if you have the conventional coal producing this much of carbon-dioxide, grams
of carbon-dioxide per kilo watt hour of electricity generation, if it is 1000 for this using this
advanced technologies we can continue emit lesser and lesser amount of carbon-dioxide
which is about 25% gain in carbon-dioxide emissions is possible using measures which
do not involve carbon-dioxide capture.
So that's not enough for us because we are still continuing to look for usage of coal
and if we are troubling or if we are doubling the amount of carbon-dioxide coal usage then
we are going to double the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions, and we are looking at going towards
a situation where we are emitting as a whole 10% of water CO2 emissions are, and as it
is India is the third largest carbon-dioxide emitter, and with this kind of continue dependence
on coal with marginal gains of about 10 to 25% of carbon-dioxide emissions is not enough
for us to meet with the global warming requirements, okay.
So another factor with respect to coal usage is the emission of this short term pollutants
like sulphur-dioxide, NOX emissions and particulate emissions, and we can use technologies that
are currently available to reduce this sulphur-dioxide emissions for example given in blue color
here and NOX emissions given in orange color, and particulate emissions given in this grey
color here with current levels of pollutants here to a significantly reduced amounts here
using technologies which are on the angle, but there is a cost factor to this, what we
have in this slightly yellow orange color is the cost of labialized cost of electricity
in terms of rupees for kilowatt hour at generation stage, you can see currently it is 2.35 and
if you use these conventional is to deal with short term pollutants and all that, the cost
will go by about 30% to 3.35, so we are paying about 30% more in order to get about 10 to
15% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions and in maybe 80% reduction or so in terms
of SOXES and NOXES, okay, so this 30% increase in the cost of electricity itself is large,
but when we want to bring in carbon-dioxide capture in sequestration which gives us a
possibility of using coal for to meet our energy needs in energy self-sufficient
way, okay, where our security is not comprise in terms of energy, okay, so if that is our
desirable way of looking at it we can see that once we bring in CCS into play the cost
of power generation doubles, and it goes up significantly here.
And so you can see that currently it is this and conventional things are increasing up
to this, but you bring in CCS it's going up this much, by using this kind of technologies
which are currently being used in the oil sector, petrochemical sector, the hope is
that this can be brought down somewhat by improved technology and also by economies
of scale but the fact remains that once we want to bring in carbon-dioxide capture sequestration
mechanisms into play then cost of electricity will go up substantially and this is something
that we have to really worry about as our developing nation because as a developing
nation and as a nation with very young people we need to promote industry and create jobs
and all of that requires a lot of capital, now that capital is being sunk into this pollution
reduction measures, so is that necessary when we are trying to promote industry, can we
effort to increase the cost of electricity which is needed so much by industry and everybody
else, so that's a policy addition that one has to take.
And so in this sense when we look at the Indian situation and what is really necessary possible
for us, looking at what we have in India in terms of energy resource and given that we
have increasing needs of energy in a large measure we have to continue to depend on coal
and we need to harness as much of the large potential for renewable energy source, clean
renewable energy sources like solar and wind that are available to us and that are coming
on to us, but in addition to that we have to continue to depend on coal and given that
coal is an obnoxious term from environment point of view for large scale power generation,
we have to clean up coal based power generation, and for this we need to make technological
strides and we need to implement certain short range pollutant combating measures like SOX,
NOX particulate emission, and mercury control measures, maybe within the next 5 to 10 years,
because this is one of the major concerns for us when we look at the quality of air,
and quality of life and health hazards that are coming from this that we need to make
them more efficient and we need to go for more efficient power plants and all this is
being practiced in India, but ultimately we need to be prepared to implement carbon-dioxide
capture in sequestration maybe in another 20, 30 years because that is a only hope for
us towards pathway to clean coal which will assure our energy needs for the next 50 to
100 years, in an environmentally sensitive way.
So there is a lot of technology development that needs to be done by us and we have to
invest more into our R&D and qualifications and all that, so technology milestones need
to be achieved, and also technology developed is not sufficient, deployment requires another
major effort and once these, both this issues are addressed then it's possible for us to
continue to use coal for to meet a large part of our energy demand well into the 21st century
and even beyond, but without this it's really impossible for us to see how we can continue
to use coal and pollute the environment in a big way, okay.
So as a final word we'd like to say that, from a policy point of view when as a nation
we want to empower our citizens towards a more prosperous life and a life which has
quality of environment, we need a lot of energy, and so it's understood that energy requirement
is a strong motivating factor for us and so there are number of indicators that are currently
being used to gauge our energy dependence and energy sufficiency, so when we look at
energy indicators we have using production pattern and also security pattern, because
energy is such a critical parameter in the strength of a nation that we have to look
at where our energy is coming from, if we depend on outside sources for our energy then
we may be taken hostage with a threat of cutting of those supplies, and this is something that's
been happening in recent geo-political world and it has happened on a number of instances,
and so for us as a developing nation and as an independent nation with its own foreign
policy for the general good of us, and also in the larger context for the entire world,
we've been following an independent foreign policy and our relations with our people and
our neighbors and all others are guided by rather utopian principles, we need not go
into those things, but given that we have an independent kind of thing, we need to look
at energy security.
So energy security and use and production pattern are the two things within this we
are looking at energy use per capita, this is an important indicator in terms of our
GDP, energy usage for unit of GDP, how much energy do we use in order to increase our
gross domestic product which is an indicator of economic prosperity, so if it is less we
are quite happy, if GDP per kilowatt hour is large we are very happy because then we
can cut down on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy usage, and efficiency
of conversion and energy conversion distribution reserves to production ratio, how much of
reserves do we have, what's the rate of production, and how many years can we sustain our reserves,
so and end use where our energy is growing in terms of industry, energy, agriculture,
and diversification in terms of fuel mix, non-carbon share renewable energy share and
fuel share, so and prices obviously so all this things are important, indicators in energy
policy.
And strategic fuel stocks and imports are also consumable for us, so these are major
drivers of policy in terms of energy generation and distribution, and given the sensitivity
of GDP environment based on this lectures we should also say strongly that we need to
include environment and sustainability have to be two additional strong themes that need
to be included in the energy debate and policy, because energy is needed but so as environment
and so as sustainability for 100 years, and only then we cannot take short term measures
which lead to chaotic problems at a later stage, given that we have to develop our energy
usage and increase it by a factor of 2, 3, 4, over the next 20 to 50 years, given that
so much development still needs to be taken, we need to look at sustainability of measures
that we need to consider, and the sustainability has a strong component, not only coming from
this use and energy and security, but also from environment, and that's a strong point
that we'd like to make, so we should be looking towards energy and environment and we should
not be looking for energy or environment, and something like that is a necessary in
our national interest.
So I hope we have been able to get across to you, a sense of, the dynamics between energy
and environment both of which are necessary for us in our modern day life, and I hope
you'll be able to understand the issues better as a result of this lectures.
Thank you very much.