With will and vision, India’s energy prospects can be changed from grim to green, and the world will benefit as a result.
The failure of the country’s electricity grid on July 30 and 31
highlights its vulnerabilities and underscores a larger national need:
about 400 million Indians are not connected to the grid at all, and
those who are have unreliable access. At 571 kWh per capita, India’s
electricity consumption is one-fifth of China’s (2,631 kWh) and less
than one-twentieth of the US’ (12,914 kWh). India’s electricity demand
will only grow.
Burning coal for electricity is increasingly expensive, causes global
warming, and jeopardises the planet’s health. In any case, India has
ash-rich coal, limited oil, unknown amounts of gas, poor mining
productivity and inadequate transport. Power plants struggle to get
reliable fuel supplies. Solar electricity today at Rs 7.50 a kWh is
economical compared with subsidised diesel-generated power at roughly Rs
15 a unit, but more expensive than coal-based electricity at about Rs
6. What, however, is the true cost of coal-based power? Prices are
distorted by subsidies, State boundaries, vote-bank politics, and
uncharged carbon-emission costs. Average prices matter less than peak
prices. When India sheds load to manage peaks, customers use expensive
diesel power.
Universal access
How do we come out of this energy and infrastructure bind? Nothing short
of a fundamental re-imagining, starting from first principles, of all
energy solutions is essential to address India’s energy needs. Can India
leapfrog into a clean-energy future rather than extend the conventional
grid with fossil fuels at its core? In a nation blessed with abundant
sunlight, to what extent should electricity be a networking service at
all? Could India tap ambient solar energy for most of its needs?
India’s single-minded focus should be massive and rapid solar
deployment, not only through utility-scale solar plants, but also
through distributed generation, household-by-household, nationwide.
Electricity in Indian homes should be rooftop-to-room and solar based
with energy self-sufficiency as the goal; the grid can complement and
serve as back-up where available. Much as TV antennas once sprouted on
rooftops, so should solar panels.
Public policy should have a singular aim: universal electricity access.
By implication, policies aimed at encouraging domestic manufacturing,
local content requirements, or favouring one technology over another
should be put aside as tertiary.
The aim should be personal power just as we have personal computers.
Slowly, we will get there. In the meanwhile, solar electricity is poised
to become a friendly, industrial scale, cottage industry, like
vegetable patches in home gardens. Photovoltaic technologies have
matured sufficiently and present us with simple, affordable electricity
alternatives to the traditional grid.
Enabling public policy can unfetter entrepreneurial energies and give
birth to millions of small and large solar-related businesses, and
thereby generate employment. Distributed solar generation can spawn
innovations. Standardised 1-kW solar kits, for instance, can be mass
produced and installed easily. The household deployments can extend to
communities and neighbourhoods resulting in self-sufficient micro-grids.
Partnership with China
Community micro-grids for tens and hundreds of households in villages,
towns and cities should be India’s preferred electricity infrastructure.
Anchored with solar, the solutions may include combinations with
bio-diesel, batteries, wind, biogas, micro-hydro, etc. At night or when
the sun is behind clouds, alternative yet local sources can assure
electricity. Once solar energy takes root, India will need less of the
colossal and wasteful transmission, distribution and generation
infrastructure except for industrial operations such as running
factories and trains.
China has recognised the importance of solar energy and invested in
numerous solar-panel factories. Taiwan is doing the same. Due to the
manufacturing excess, prices have dropped by over 70 per cent in the
past three years, and the fall continues. India presents a ready market
for that production. The formula, ‘China produces, India deploys’, makes
for a winning partnership.
Moral Imperative
Among competing national priorities, what can be more catalytic of
overall welfare than universal electricity? It can extend working hours,
reduce pollution and diseases, and help prevent food waste. Beyond
lighting homes, solar solutions allow for the spread of the Internet and
therefore education, e-governance kiosks and ATM machines.
Solar panels facilitate a parallel infrastructure for clean transport —
charging batteries for electric bicycles, scooters and cars. Solar
energy aids cooking, powers streetlights, operates irrigation pump sets
and substitutes diesel burning for cellular towers. Stubborn problems
such as efficient battery storage persist, but they can be dealt with as
the market evolves.
The grid failure has crystallized the solar market. There has never been
an India-sized market for solar electricity, with relentlessly rising
demand, talented people, old infrastructure and plentiful sunlight. The
scale can establish new low-price benchmarks and thereby aid the entire
world. Unfavourable economics has been the primary barrier to the spread
of solar energy until recently, but no longer.
Universal electrification is a human-rights, inter-generational-justice
and human-capital-growth issue all in one. For how many decades should a
third of India’s citizens use kerosene for light and cooking, children
study by smoky, unhealthy flames, and income-earning opportunities fade
with sunset?
(Mahesh Bhave is Visiting Professor, Strategy, and Debashis Chatterjee Director, IIM Kozhikode.)
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