His view was that the plan panel's ambitious goal to add 100,000 Mw to India's power-generation capacity during the 12th Plan (2012-2017) was “ecologically impossible" considering that 90 per cent of the proposed target was coal-based. Not only would this lead to a large increase in green-house gases but it would also involve extensive mining over vast areas of forest and tribal land. Never in the recent past has the “growth-versus-sustainability" debate been as sharp.
So if coal is to be supplemented, India technically has options based on gas, nuclear and hydro. Augmentation from renewable sources is also a possibility, but it unfortunately cannot meet the growing demand considering its limited potential to contribute to large-scale energy generation. Gas was expected to be a major contributor with considerable reserves identified and was also expected to meet part of the peaking requirement over time. Gas is, however, facing hurdles on two counts — availability and price. Gas production has not ramped up as expected and increasing prices are likely to render it uncompetitive. The logistics of inland movement also pose a challenge. There is, therefore, uncertainty on who is getting how much gas and at what price. All these are likely to dampen enthusiasm towards investing in capital-intensive gas projects. Notwithstanding India's current enthusiasm for civil nuclear power, recent events will only sharpen resistance, lengthen already long gestation periods for such plants, over and above the known hurdle of high capital cost per Mw. So that leaves us with hydro-power — in which, thankfully, we have a large amount of potential availability within the country and in the neighbourhood.
Unfortunately, in spite of the potential, as can be seen in the graph (Water fall), the share of hydro has been consistently falling, after having peaked in the Nehruvian era. Read the full report here.
Source: Vinayak Chatterjee, Business Standard, New Delhi.Â
