Skip to main content

Coal from Australia can't end India's energy poverty, costs are too high, says top ex-bureaucrat

By Our Representative
India's former energy secretary EAS Sarma has strongly put forward the case against coal mining, considered by powerful coal-fired power company owners of India as the panacea to end “India's energy poverty”. In an article in the wake of the Australian Federal Court calling environmental nod to the Adani Group's coalmining project in the country as “invalid”, he says, social and economic costs of sending power to all the nooks and cornder of India are “huge” and far “outweigh” the perceived benefits of coal.
Claiming that as former secretary of India’s ministry of power, he knows India’s challenges, the ex-bureaucrat has said, “Australian coal doesn’t make economic sense for us – but renewables do”, adding, the Adanis' “huge Carmichael coal mine – the biggest in Australian history – has been overturned by the Federal Court, causing much consternation for coal advocates, chief among them Australian prime minister Tony Abbott.”
“Abbott”, says Sarma, writing in the influential British daily “The Guardian” (August 7), “contends that Carmichael is critical for the human welfare of tens of millions of Indians and will provide power for 100 million people in India who currently have none”, but ground realities are totally different.
According to Sarma, “The claim that 100 million will be lifted out of energy poverty by a new wave of coal exports – driven largely by Indian companies Adani and GVK’s proposals to open Queensland’s vast Galilee Basin coal fields – reveals a deep lack of understanding of the real situation in India and other countries, where large populations remain without access to electricity.”
“India’s population of 1.24 billion comprises 247 million households, 68% of whom live in rural villages. According to the 2011 census, 45% of these rural households – 75 million – have no electricity. Of urban households, 6 million remain without electricity, or about 8% of the total”, says Sarma, adding, “These figures have not changed appreciably since 2001, though around 95,000 MW of new largely coal-based electricity generation capacity was added.”
Pointing out that “the benefits of adding new generation capacity accrued largely to the existing, affluent consumers” and “there are a number of reasons why this is the case”, Sarma says, “In the rural areas, many remote villages are beyond the reach of the electricity grid. There are also many families in electrified villages who cannot pay for expensive electricity.”
Quoting studies which show that “when a village is more than 5km from the grid, the cost of supplying electricity from solar and other off-grid solutions is far below the costs of supplying from conventional sources such as coal”, the ex-bureaucrat says, “This is due to the high cost of building out the poles and wires to provide access to coal electricity and the technical losses involved in transmitting and distributing electricity to the consumers.”
Over and above this, Sarma says, “There is also a growing public opposition to industrial projects, especially large centralised power plants, whether coal-based, hydro or nuclear, as they uproot thousands of families from their lands, pollute their environment and disrupt their lives. Upstream, coal and uranium mining activities are equally destructive.”
He adds, “Burning coal, whether local or imported, generates large quantities of fly ash containing toxic pollutants like lead, zinc, arsenic, cadmium, sulfur, mercury and radioactive uranium/ thorium isotopes, which adversely affect the health of the people near the power stations, often the rural poor, whose disadvantage is worsened by these health impacts.”
Citing studies on people residing near coal-based power plants along the border of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, he says, these have “revealed unsafe levels of mercury in their blood samples, at times as high as 110 parts per billion.” He adds, “Similarly, studies around a coal power plant in the Punjab have indicated widespread radioactive contamination of the environment, impacting the health of pregnant women and children.”
Insisting that “such huge social costs outweigh the perceived benefits of coal”, Sarma says, “Though a large coal producer, India’s domestic production of coal has lagged behind the demand, increasing the country’s dependence on imports, which are presently 180 million tonnes. Most of this coal comes from Indonesia, which is cheaper than Australian coal.”
"The Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has shown that the cost of producing electricity in India using Australian coal from the Galilee Basin is two times the current average wholesale cost of electricity. This makes Galilee Basin coal too expensive for India”, Sarma points out, adding, hence “to address energy poverty and energy security, India’s focus must be on encouraging locally-generated and indigenous renewable energy systems.”

Comments

TRENDING

'Enough evidence' in Indian tradition to support legal basis for same-sex marriage

By Iyce Malhotra, Joseph Mathai, Sandeep Chachra*  The ongoing hearing in the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage provides space for much-needed conversations on issues that have hitherto remained “invisible” or engaged with patriarchal locker room humour. We must recognize that people with diverse sexualities and complex gender identities have faced discrimination, stigma and decades of oppression. Their issues have mainly remained buried in dominant social discourse, and many view them with deep insecurities.

Savarkar 'criminally betrayed' Netaji and his INA by siding with the British rulers

By Shamsul Islam* RSS-BJP rulers of India have been trying to show off as great fans of Netaji. But Indians must know what role ideological parents of today's RSS/BJP played against Netaji and Indian National Army (INA). The Hindu Mahasabha and RSS which always had prominent lawyers on their rolls made no attempt to defend the INA accused at Red Fort trials.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Victim of communal violence, Christians in Manipur want Church leadership to speak up

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*  The first eleven days of May 2023 have, in many ways, been a defining period of Indian history! Plenty has happened in a rapid-fire stream of events. Ironically, each one of them are indicators of how crimes and the criminalisation of society has become the ‘new norm’; these include, the May Day rallies with a focus on the four labour codes which are patently against the rights of workers; the U S Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its Annual Report on 1 May stating that conditions for religious freedom in India “continued to worsen in 2022”; the continued protest by the Indian women wrestlers at Jantar Mantar for the expulsion of the chief of the Indian Wrestlers Federation on very serious allegations; the Elections in Karnataka on 10 May (with communalism and corruption as the mainstay); the release of the fake, derogative and insensitive film ‘The Kerala Story’; the release of World Free Press Index on 3 May which places India

Delhi HC rules in favour of retired Air Force officer 'overcharged' for Covid treatment

By Rosamma Thomas*  In a decision of May 22, 2023, the Delhi High Court ruled in favour of petitioner Group Captain Suresh Khanna who was under treatment at CK Birla Hospital, Gurugram, between April 28 and May 5, 2021, for a period of eight days, for Covid-19 pneumonia. The petitioner had to pay Rs 3,55,286 as treatment costs, but the Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) only reimbursed him for Rs 1,83,748, on the basis of government-approved rates. 

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Unlike other revolutionaries, Hindutva icon wrote 5 mercy petitions to British masters

By Shamsul Islam*  The Hindutva icon VD Savarkar of the RSS-BJP rulers of India submitted not one, two,or three but five mercy petitions to the British masters! Savarkarites argue: “There are no evidences to prove that Savarkar collaborated with the British for his release from jail. In fact, his appeal for release was a ruse. He was well aware of the political developments outside and wanted to be part of it. So he kept requesting for his release. But the British authorities did not trust him a bit” (YD Phadke, ‘A complex Hero’, "The Indian Expres"s, August 31, 2004)

Polygamy in India "down" in 45 yrs: Muslims' from 5.7 to 2.55%, Hindus' 5.8 to 1.77%, "common" in SCs, STs

By Rajiv Shah Amidst All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) justifying polygamy, saying it “meets social and moral needs and the provision for it stems from concern and sympathy for women”, facts suggest the the practice is down from 5.7 per cent of Muslim families in 1961 to 2.55 per cent in 2006.

India joining US sponsored trade pillar to hurt Indian farmers, 'promote' GM seeds, food

Counterview Desk  As many as 32 civil society organisations (CSOs), in a letter to Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and India joining the trade pillar, have said that its provisions will allow the US to ensure a more favourable regulatory regime “for enhancing its exports of genetically modified (GM) seeds and GM food”, underlining, it will “significantly hurt the livelihoods of Indian farmers.”

Modi govt 'wholly untrustworthy' on Covid data, censored criticism on pandemic: Lancet

By Rajiv Shah   One of the world’s most prestigious health journals, brought out from England, has sharply criticised the Narendra Modi government for being “wholly untrustworthy on Covid-19 health data”, stating, the “official government figures place deaths at more than 530 000, while WHO excess death estimates for 2020 and 2021 are near 4·7 million.”