On decarbonizing energy in India

It's good to decarbonize energy in India, because we need to reduce pollution as we increase our level of development.

What is the energy system we want to decarbonize? IEA publishes data, and the Sankey visualization helps us understand sources and uses. Ref. http://www.iea.org/sankey/#?c=India&s=Balance. To decarbonize the economy, we need to address the carbon-energy needs the consumers. We can use the data for the USA to think about how the concepts we develop might apply as the Indian economy develops.

Bio-waste and nuclear power can be considered carbon neutral. Hydro power has side-effects that generate greenhouse gasses, ref http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n9/full/ngeo1211.html. We can start by asking how we can drive to zero use of oil, coal, and natural gas. Let’s use the IEA data for “Final Consumption” to do this.

Electricity generation can be switched entirely to non-carbon fuels, with the specific non-carbon source being chosen based on its viability for the specific investment.

Industrial use of oil and coal is sometimes unavoidable, for instance the use of coking coal in the manufacture of steel. Biomass (charcoal) has to be deployed for industrial uses where carbon is required.

Transport uses a lot of the oil. This is because oil provides a dense energy store, at 44 megajoules of energy per kilogram, ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density. Most of the oil is used as fuel for internal combustion engines such as spark ignition engines, compression ignition engines, gas turbines, etc. Decarbonizing strategies have to take into account the fuels’ energy density and the conversion (engine) to consumable energy.

Air transport uses aviation turbine fuel (ATF) or other oil-based fuels. Power-to-weight ratio is a key factor for economic viability. Reliability and safety are also crucial. Decarbonizing aircraft fuels is being done using used cooking oil and biomass derived fuels, ref http://aviationbenefits.org/environmental-efficiency/sustainable-fuels/passenger-biofuel-flights/.

Reserving the first use of bio-oil for air transport, there will be little left for land and water transport. Land and water fuels and engines are more amenable to changes, such as internal combustion engines that use ammonia as fuel, fuel cells and external combustion engines.

Ammonia can be generated at industrial scale from water, nitrogen from the air (78 percent of our atmosphere is nitrogen gas), and zero-carbon electric power, ref http://nh3fuelassociation.org/ and http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/hr/print/volume-28/issue-7/articles/renewable-fuels-manufacturing.html. Ammonia prices are affordable, and zero carbon ammonia production prices depend on the cost of the electric power as depicted in the hydroworld.com article. When ammonia burns, it just produces water vapor and nitrogen – as much as it took to make the ammonia. There is no carbon footprint, as opposed to 2.64 kilogram of CO2 per liter of diesel consumed. As a fuel, ammonia has 19 megajoules per kilogram, which is enough to run bus engines, ref https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929283-500-look-to-the-past-for-the-fuel-of-the-future/.So land and water transport can convert to ammonia fuel using existing technology for internal combustion and the ammonia supply chain.

Fuel cells run on hydrogen fuel, and currently have no visible impact on the country’s energy flows. They can become relevant if we set up a hydrogen fuel supply chain. This can happen in two ways. First, hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis of water by zero-carbon electric power sources, and piped to its users. Second, ammonia can be used as a hydrogen carrier, and used in fuel cells. Fuel cells continue to require more research, but large companies are investing in the technology so it can become commercially useful, ref http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516711/why-toyota-and-gm-are-pushing-fuel-cell-cars-to-market/. A bonus from putting fuel cells in cars is that the car’s power train may also be used to provide electricity for your home or small business. Distributed electric power generation using fuel cells makes electric power more broadly available.

External combustion technology, exemplified by coal-fired engines, are old technologies that can be applied to new fuels such as aluminum or boron that can be made using zero carbon power. This is another path for R&D, ref http://phys.org/news/2015-12-metal-powders-potential-fossil-fuels.html.

What do we need to do to drive the change? Just replacing fossil oil is an enormous challenge, ref http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/04/03/what-are-the-top-five-facts-everyone-should-know-about-oil-exploration/. In the case of India, though, the economy is so undeveloped that we will require massive increase in energy flows as we develop.

How much of an increase in energy? India consumed 22,121 petajoules in 2013, while the USA consumed 62,595. The population of each was 1,279 and 317 million, ref http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/. Therefore each Indian consumed 11 times less power in 2013: 17 versus 197 gigajoules per capita per year. Development of the Indian economy coupled with population growth could drive energy demand to 336,526 petajoules in 2050 using a population forecast of 1,705 million and 197 gigajoules per capita. That’s 15 times more energy in 2050 than 2013.

All the carbon current infrastructure will have ended its service life by 2050 if not rebuilt, 34 years from now (2016). So if all new investments are made in no-carbon energy then in 2050 we will see an entirely decarbonized energy system for India.