India may build new coal plants due to low cost despite climate change
reuters.com
reuters.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_India#Anti-nu...
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/power/21-ne...
Interestingly, it was the mostly NDA opposition (current govt) that had then went against nuclear plants as a political jibe.
When India has a choice between spending capital on more climate-friendly energy production versus improving education/health care/the conditions of the elderly, who can blame them for prioritizing the latter?
For a rich western nation like germany? Not a lot of low hanging opportunities so might as well spend on green energy.
They are prioritising older voters over younger ones.
This tactic ends with a gerontocracy and ultimately no more humans.
Anyway, I welcome you to India. Stay here for a few years. Live through peak summers with power-cuts due to load shedding. And then repeat your message.
I recognise that this is currently a privileged position - the upfront costs aren’t insignificant - it has cost us about €100k to achieve this degree of low-impact living - but it doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s perfectly possible to direct investment in a direction other than massive centralised and industrialised growth, which incurs the problems you describe, and simultaneously provide a better quality of life for the majority. You could subsidise rooftop solar, or local hydroelectric projects, or passive cooling systems, or subsidise people to nurture nature, and both provide energy and cut energy consumption in one fell swoop. India has the opportunity to make good decisions, rather than becoming burdened by what seem like good decisions now, but are bad decisions in the long term. It’s a shame to see that opportunity squandered.
India is already building plenty of solar parks. We still need a lot more power.
I don't want to wear a hair shirt while people in other countries wear the finest silks.
Climate change is THE existential threat of our generation. The only ones which will benefit long term from avoiding the problem are those with a vested interest in fossil fuel companies.
1. This is a draft policy. 2. Which hasn't even been released, so we can't see the context in which it says this. 3. Article itself says "State-run NTPC Ltd (NTPC.NS), India's top electricity producer, said in September it will not acquire land for new coal-fired projects. Private firms and many run by states across the country have not invested in new coal-fired plants for years saying they were not economically viable.", so at best this is a policy saying "we are open to building coal if necessary". 4. "While suggesting flexible use of coal-fired and natural gas-fired power to ensure grid stability in the coming years, the draft policy lists promoting clean power as its primary objective."
Any case, coal is kind of expensive for India - we don't have any good Anthracite, so we import most of it. What we do have is Lignite which is less efficient and therefore more expensive to run. We haven't built new coal in years, and the last series of coal plants got mostly halted in court cases, or were shelved because they were not going to meet their targets.
Anyway, when they release the actual document, we can see what they're saying...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/mexico-coal-fo...
While the Western industrialized countries are starting to make modest progress in fighting climate change, this is not happening in much of the third world.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India#El...
Nothing we're doing will matter if the rest of the world keeps dumping carbon into the atmosphere.
Nobody will admit this. We're just posturing here. We can't tell these economies to turn green (it doesn't make sense for them to!), yet we're not pouring in money to help fix the structural blockers.
We need to put manufacturing, finance, resources, education, and more into developing economies. It's a win-win. Developed nations can benefit from cheap labor while developing nations catch up and get an influx of export activity that spurs their growth.
Eventually we'll all reach economic parity and can find consensus on this problem.
A wealthy and prosperous nation doesn't want coal and can afford the cost of switching to alternatives.
> A wealthy and prosperous nation doesn't want coal and can afford the cost of switching to alternatives.
AFAICT, China is a wealthy and prosperous nation, and by nation we mean the state, but the same cannot be said for the people. I could be wrong but that's how I see things through media. If that's correct, then it means that there are just too many people and even China still cannot afford to use clean energy for all.
The elephant in the room has to be mentioned too: They are producing for the rest of the world, enabling the west not to look like an environmental disaster.
More seriously, while China has been slowly cleaning up its act, India is still steadily getting worse. 15 of the world's top 20 most polluted cities are now in India, with Pakistan and Bangladesh accounting for 3 more, and only 2 in China:
https://www.iqair.com/world-most-polluted-cities
Caveat: the definition of "city" is a bit debatable here, with most of those 15 actually a part of greater Delhi's urban sprawl. But it's notable that none of China's megacities make it into the top 50, with the top offenders being primarily remote centers of heavy industry.
Of course they will pollute more.
Also, they're not exactly a democracy so people don't have much of a choice anyway. I'm pretty sure they're not exactly happy either. (last time I visited I had a coughing fit in shanghai and the sky was gray-ish)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/science-enviro...
14% China's emissions can be directly attributed to Chinese exports. The domestic economy is a much bigger source of pollution, unless of course you consider the entirety of China a western colony that only exists to export products to the west. I consider the latter option untenable.
It's a wee hard sell to locals in developed nation. Hey, let's move jobs abroad and lets use our resources to prop up other nations. What is left back home? Why bother paying taxes if objective is far away and and far in the future.
When in reality it's "be poor now (and likely to face the collapse of global civilisation and ecological crisis is still in roadmap) or maybe your grandkids will face the ecological crisis".
BTW, your suggestion that my post in any way represents or resembles a call for ethnic cleansing is in extremely poor taste and bad faith. Stop putting words in my mouth.
The problem is not that collapse isn't certain. The problem is that solution is iffy to say the least. So it's one possibly bad outcome vs another possibly bad outcome. On top of that, one out come may come much faster than the other.
However, assuming it is coming, what is the solution? Besides "stop pumping greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere," I just don't see one. And, doing that is going to lower a lot of peoples' standards of living, i.e. make them poor.
Solution is "stop pumping greenhouse misions and consuming so much crap shipped all around the world". But developed countries paying off developing countries won't bring us to that solution.
The world as a whole has to consume much much less, yesterday. Developed countries can start by bringing manufacturing and agriculture back home. This will increase costs and lower consumption.
A) be poor now
versus
B) maybe face the collapse of global civilization in 40 years.
They'll chose B) everytime.
Why do you think that a lot of people want "small government"? The state/government is by definition in those "commons".
Regarding examples, they're countless. Think of petty tyrants fighting over the remains of the Byzantine Empire just as about the Ottomans were about to conquer it. Almost every falling empire had this behavior going on, selfish people "getting theirs" just before the fall.
It's human nature, unfortunately.
> "The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all [on what becomes law]."
But because the government/state is ill-defined and shared, it can be abused and it's much harder to do anything about it.
Private property is selfish but efficient and clearly separated from the rest (in general) while public property is altruistic, not that efficient and generally not that well delineated from the rest.
I love evolution of USSR for this reason. First the masses took down Tsarist regime to take property of the rich. Then masses took down Soviet regime to privatise the property. Both events happened because life was shit and people were looking for a quick way to live better.
Do you have any arguments to believe in the other option?
If a foreign nation runs a trade surplus and the US runs a trade deficit as a result, that means that spending by foreigners is smaller than their income, in other words, foreigners are saving money which they can invest in the USA. If they invest then the money flowing outside the US will also flow back to the US.
The Chinese buy US treasury bonds, that is where most of the USD China receives eventually end up. The government can issue debt to tap into the savings and invest them on behalf of the people buying treasury bonds. The investment will create new jobs and hopefully a return over the long term that beats inflation.
Of course the assumption was that the money is being invested. From what I have seen Donald Trump merely used the low yields on the treasury bonds to cut taxes for the rich. This will increase the corporate savings rate at the expense of the household savings rate. It's entirely possible that the additional savings end up in treasury bonds again and we are stuck in a loop.
I don't see any good argument why we should give explicit permission to do harm on a global level. We can and should acknowledge that a lack of education, healthcare, stable economies, freedom, and economic mobility are contributing factors for pollution.
It’d create good jobs for developed nations workforce that gets sent to build the facilities. It’d create low cost green energy in the developing world. Not to mention tons of new economic activity in the area these get built to serve the foreigners coming in to build the plants.
Of course I support giving away green technology, because I think reducing carbon emissions has much higher priority than making profits.
nations can’t even do some kind of sanction to promote clean tech without some social justice moralisms? It’s so tiresome.
The plane is going down. First class goes down with coach.
Without enforceable global bans, someone will generate GDP by extracting, exporting, importing and burning hydrocarbons.
Not saying any of that is true of India specifically - I’m not familiar enough to have an informed opinion there.
Thats kind of the point. The cost of capital is rightly higher in developing nations. Capital intensive carbon neutral projects just don't make sense for much of the world.
I'm not sure what kind of sources you're looking for, with such an unbounded hypothetical.
If coal is the cheapest, that means it is the best way to create electricity right now. If western countries feel strongly about this, I welcome their $1T funding to build adequate nuclear and renewable power plants in India over the next decade.
Indeed, the west should think of ways in leveling the LCOE playing field in the third world through financial and material support.
I dont like this view, nor think its fair. ~100 years ago todays developed countries didn't have access to anything like the modern knowledge or scientific consensus about climate change as well as alternate technology / products. Even 30 years ago....
And making this 'but you did it' claim seems cherry picking. These countries take full advantage of the beneficial modern knowledge and equipment like computers. If countries want to justify pouting like the industrial revolution because you did too, then get rid of computers and other tech and have the same journey otherwise accept this is a choice you make today and there is no excuse other than you want to and to hell with the climate science.
And lets also recognise power generation solar is increasingly cheaper than coal so there is likely vested interest pushing government down this path even if we disregard the moral/historic side first google (so forgive if not the best) but these studies come up all the time: e.g. https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2020/Jun/Renewa...
tldr: I dont buy this excuse. It sounds fair as a quick one liner but doesnt fly when you consider the detail
Worst, India at least recognized that they can't afford that, but for instance Poland signed European version of a "green deal", which costs are estimated to be 0.4 trillion US dollars (according to Polish gov estimates) up to 1 trillion according to McKinsey Consulting. This is roughly 2-4 times Polish GDP. EU funds will cover about 20% of that sum.
Poland will not be able to afford to spend that much money without rising energy prices to the exorbitant level (and because of CO2 certificates they are already the highest in Europe), which means less competitive economy, which means less money in people pocket, which means huge group of electorate angry at democracy and EU. This cannot end well.
This skips the part where renewable is cheaper.... if a nation can afford a coal power plant, why can they afford the equivalent generation capacity of solar/wind?
Also, this argument of "get ride of modern equipment and have the same journey" is weak at best. Although I agree that climate change didn't pick up until a decade or so ago, there were already studies conducted in late 1800s and early 1900s.
edit: I'm not saying that what India is doing is right. It's just that the comments like the parent comment are laughable in my opinion.
People living in the Western world will never understand the frustration of having your computer reboot 15 times a day, or getting your game console reset in the middle of a game.
We need to satisfy the demand first, as soon as possible. If solar or wind were the most effective source right now, India would have used that for sure. Who wants to pay more than necessary? The fact is that the tech is simply not there yet. In the meantime, why should we suffer?
Only it isn't. Not including the negative externalities (too much pollution, too expensive), not excluding them (too expensive).
How much pollution is too much? I feel we are a long way from that point still, in India.
I would argue: any pollution that isn't factored into the cost of the energy production. If it's not priced in then there's no rational acting in the market, which (for better or worse) is the mechanism that we're using to figure out which energy systems to deploy.
Even with that in mind, renewables like solar and wind are already easily cost-competitive with coal in many locations and getting more so every day (by most current measures of levelised cost of energy).
> India leads the world in pollution-linked deaths– followed by China and Nigeria – according to a report published on Wednesday that estimated the global impact of contaminants in the air, water and workplace.
[...]
> India and China led in the number of pollution deaths, with about 2.3 million and 1.8 million respectively, followed by Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Air pollution in India is complicated, because there's a mix of industrial and domestic sources. But these numbers feel to me like India urgently needs to do more work to reduce pollution.
I think we can easily reduce this number if we produce enough power and build enough hospitals and teach enough doctors. There are multiple ways to solve every problem. Reducing pollution is one of them, in this case.
If some developed countries have a problem with this draft policy, they could’ve done a lot more in making nuclear technology and fuel easier to access for a cleaner source. But no, even though a historic deal was signed between the U.S. and India by 2008, there have been a lot of impediments and delays in supplying uranium or getting into deals for supplying uranium. Unlike a couple of its neighbors who have a history of selling such technology and materials to hostile/rogue nations with impunity, India doesn’t do that.
With China dumping cheap solar panels and related materials, India has also made it a priority to manufacture these within the country. This will also take time to scale up.
Meanwhile, there’s a growing population with growing energy needs.
As much as I would like climate change to be treated seriously, if it's going to be we take care of our people first and even then hoard 30m doses that will not be used and also prevent export of materials needed to make vaccines, why should countries like India not look at their own needs first? (If we do have a climate change catastrophic event, it's not like developed world is going to come rushing to help others as we have seen with covid.)
What are you to build otherwise? Nuclear? Environmentalists are against those as well.
Why should my citizens give up basic development and quality of life when the prime drivers of global warming most recently withdrew from the Paris agreement in a fit of right wing nationalistic self interest, because they felt their lifestyles / livelihoods were threatened? India and China have shown far more maturity than the US in sticking with the agreement and continuing to work with the world to find a path.
CN is where most manufacturing is, even though consumption is in again the rich nations. [2]
Yes, the impact of global warming will be disproportionately borne by counties such as India and pretty much all of Africa if the worst of climate change isn't mitigated. But I am screwed anyway if I cut my development to meet emission targets. So I'd rather develop rapidly to build the economic and infrastructure wherewithal to withstand the climate change disruption; the biggest producers / consumers of the carbon economy are still driving climate change [3], and those guys (including Australia) aren't too keen on actually making the painful decisions they need to. Why ask me?
The US automobile industry still promotes gas guzzling trucks. Ford has completely stopped selling sedans in the US, because sedans, though fuel efficient, are not profitable. Because the US can't be arsed to extend / demand / price for the fuel efficiency standards for trucks. And John Kerry has the temerity to come preach to the rest of the world.
China is already the world's largest manufacturer and consumer of electric vehicles. They have a remarkably impressive mass rapid transport system. They are doing more than the US and EU are, at this point [4]. Let us see the US invest in mass rapid transport; in rail networks. I've lived in the US for almost 10 years; while I get that some parts of the vast country are too low in population density to support or justify mass transit, that's simply not the case for the ACELA corridor, or the large cities and economic regions on the coasts. These are hard social changes, and none of the OCED countries have demonstrated the necessary will-power and willingness to accept some disruption to their lives; don't ask others do to what you aren't willing to do first.
The EU has started to some limited extent, but there's barely any carbon intensive manufacturing left in the EU: all of it has been outsourced to CN and other developing nations. Once I see them start imposing a carbon consumption tax, then I'll accept they are actually serious about climate change. Come preach / pontificate to me then, or ask me to make my own hard choices in terms of such trade-offs.
I didn't create this problem. It is my shared responsibility to solve the problem, because I have benefited from the carbon powered technological and trade innovation. But don't expect me to assume the lion's share of the burden while the countries that drove, still drive climate change, pay lip service to making the hard choices they need to be doing as well. :shrug:
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/share-co2-emissions
[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/270537/forecast-for-elec...
Edit: Clarified and expanded on a few points, corrected spelling & grammatical errors.
- Elon Musk
There are things called clouds that often block it.
Mankind has known about the fact that some gases absorb outgoing radiation of certain wavelengths was known by Fourier since ~1820.
Arrhenius discovered if you doubled CO2, you'd get an effect on temp. ~1900.
I bought FCG months ago on 2x leverage.
Mankind will thirst through natural gas by embracing renewables in a hope of minimizing CO2.
The only people who are saying otherwise seem to be unable to answer any sort of real questions about chemistry.
A simple example is that you'll find a lot of CS+ Physicist+EE in silicon valley claim that all we need is high voltage transmission lines between renewables corridors in the USA.
Hogwash - if you ascribe to minimizing green-house gases, one of the chemicals you use in insulating high voltage lines is sulfur hexafluoride, a chemical with ~22k the global warming potential of CO2 on a 100 year basis.
I'm now looking to make a long bet on coal if I can find the right stock or ETF. I think natural gas booms under a decarbonization regime.
https://twitter.com/BvddyCorleone/status/1383859373236121611...
I might have done well on FCG esp. on 2x leverage, I think I'll do far better on coal if I can find the right peg.
All developing countries have thirst for steel and nitrogen fertilizer - they will burn coal and natural gas respectively to attain them.
They are the ingredients for scaling a civilization.