Make in India to remove the energy constraint on India’s development

To increase our level of development, India needs to increase its level energy use per capita. This requires a massive increase in energy supply. The energy constraint is about how to increase energy supply without causing environmental pollution and global warming.

How much energy do we need?

As per the IEA (http://www.iea.org/statistics/), the annual per-capita energy consumption for India and the USA is as follows:

Energy Consumption, Annual (IEA, 2014)	India	USA
Total Energy Consumption, MWh/capita	7.4	80.7
Electric Energy Consumption, MWh/capita	0.8	13.0

Electric energy is only 11% of the Indian consumption. What constitutes the rest of it?

1. Petroleum products (such as diesel, petrol, etc.) and natural gas
2. Wood, dung-cake, and agricultural waste used for fuel
3. Coal and lignite

We should set our development target in 2030 to be at the level of USA today. For this, we will need to scale up energy by 11 times. With the momentum we'll gain, we can build up from there. These are the proposed energy targets for India:

Energy Metric		2017	2030	2050
Total	Population (billions)	1.3	1.5	1.9
	Total Energy, TWh	9,676	121,068	306,706
	Oil & Gas, TWh	3,193	No fossil fuel	No fossil fuel
	Electric Power, TWh	1,040	118,068	303,706
	Coal and Lignite, TWh	2,443	No fossil fuel	No fossil fuel
	Bio-waste, TWh	3,000	3,000 biofuel	3,000 biofuel
Per capita	Total Energy, MWh	7.4	80.7	161.4
	Oil & Gas, MWh	2.5	-	-
	Bio-waste, MWh	2.3	2.0	1.6

We must also have these constraints on our energy supply plan:

1. Phase out fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, coal, and lignite) to avoid pollution
2. Produce carbon-neutral biofuels to replace the diesel, petrol, kerosene, ATF, CNG, LPG, etc. Bio-wastes (wood, dung-cake, and agricultural waste) are renewable and carbon-rich, and serve as the feedstock for biofuels. To avoid ecological disaster, we must keep the biofuels at current level of 3,000 TWh/year.
3. Use non-polluting energy sources (wind, solar, and nuclear) to fill the gap.

To meet this plan, we need to produce 121,068 TWh of energy by 2030, of which only 3,000 TWh is from bio-waste. Electric power generation must increase from 1,040 to 118,068 TWh, which is 114 times the current level.

Energy Metric		2017	2030	2050
Total	Total Energy, TWh	9,676	121,068	306,706
	Electric Power, TWh	1,040	118,068	303,706
	Bio-waste, TWh	3,000	3,000	3,000
Growth	Electric Power	Baseline	114	292
	Bio-waste	Baseline	1	1

This kind of 100x catch-up has happened earlier: our tele-density shot up from 5 million in 1991 to 700 million in 2012 and over 1 billion in 2016.

How much generating capacity will we need? At 90% plant load factor, we need 15,000 GW. How can we build it? Ref http://powermin.nic.in/en/content/power-sector-glance-all-india, we have 315 GW of generating capacity at present, with 43% of it in the private sector. We have a better base to scale up private sector in energy than we had for the telecom sector.

Installed Capacity	2017	2030
State Sector, GW	103	103
Central Sector, GW	77	77
Private Sector, GW	135	15,000
Total, GW	315	15,180

To ramp up electric power generation to 15,000 GW, these are the methods:

1. Solar: India’s solar potential is estimated at 750 GW
2. Wind: India’s potential could be higher than 1,000 GW
3. Nuclear: power can supply the balance of 13,250 GW.

The targets we currently pursue are sadly unambitious, even in the long-term. Ref http://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/Energy_Efficiency.pdf, our NITI Aayog planners report only 762 TWh of energy use (probably just the electric power generated by State & Central plants), as against the 9,676 TWh estimated by the IEA. Then they intend to scale it to just 2,239 TWh in 2030, which is only 1.5 MWh/capita as compared to 7.4 MWh/capita of total energy consumption today and a developmental need for 11 times more than that. This plan will keep us firmly in the undeveloped and energy-poor category even in 2047.

The same lack of imagination and planning is what we see when we bemoan the bankrupt and money-losing Discoms. When we plan for 100x growth, these will become a remnant of a past era like the BSNL of telecom, instead of a dead weight crushing all attempts at scaling. 

Make in India

 

We need to set ourselves the challenge of establishing a power-plant industry that would power India up to any desired standard. The industry size will be huge: at $1.5 million per MW, it will be US$22.5 trillion of capex for 15,000 GW. We can afford it in the same way as we afforded the mobile telecom investments: funded by the people who pay for improved infrastructure because they see it improving their own lives and productivity.

We can make it transformative by “Make in India”, to create the manufacturing entities that will build the power plants for use in India and abroad. China already dominates the solar photovoltaic supply chain. The wind turbine space is hotly contested, but not by Indian companies. Scalable biofuel and nuclear plant technology is in startup stage, and can be a “Make in India” success story if we choose.

What will it take?

1. Incubate and pilot world-class biofuel and nuclear plant technology in India
2. Deploy and use the technology in India, with facilitative regulatory approach
3. Build a track record of cheap and safe operations that will enable scaling globally.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

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.

Solving for air pollution in India

We have a massive air pollution problem in India, and it's creating a health hazard similar to forcing non-smokers to smoke simply from breathing the air in our cities and towns.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_brown_cloud, effects: worse health, changed monsoon rain, more warming, worse harvests, more intense cyclones
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_India
3) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/holding-your-breath-in-india.html, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/indias-air-pollution-emergency.html
4) http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/landmark-study-lies-buried-how-delhis-poisonous-air-is-damaging-its-children-for-life/, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/air-quality-levels-bengaluru-fares-worse-than-delhi/article7074817.ece

First, we must get the data and monitor the effects
1) Set up air data monitors
2) Analyze the data to understand causes of pollution
3) Develop solutions, prioritize and act to solve for this

The root causes are deeply embedded and widespread. This is a starter list for a data-driven discussion:
1) Industrial pollution, e.g., from smoke-stacks, a large amount is from state-owned power plants
a) Stop companies spewing polluting smoke, ref http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/indias-thermal-power-plants-lag-on-emissions-and-efficiency-says-study-741376. Likely force shut-down leading to distress sale, as State owners lack the capability to clean up their act. Phased transfer to private hands will enable pollution control norms to be applied.
b) Increase use of zero-emission power generation technologies, ref http://www.withouthotair.com

2) Vehicle/transport emissions
a) Stop subsidizing kerosene. Most of it is used to adulterate diesel. Using adulterated diesel increases engine emissions.
b) Low average speeds cause higher pollution per trip (pollution per km moved), so improve the roads and apply town-planning. Increasing average speeds includes measures to reduce distance-traveled and time spent, so it includes mass-transit public transport, elevated roads, more parking spaces where needed, park-and-ride, etc.
c) Better maintenance of engines to avoid belching black smoke, apply emission-control rules to prevent such vehicles from running.

3) Diesel generator backup (telecom towers, offices, shops, homes, etc.)
a) Eliminate grid-power outages
b) Reduce grid-power outages to make battery back-up viable
c) See Industrial pollution (above) ... stopping subsidized electricity, that causes loss-making power businesses and thus erratic power supply, will solve for a key "good" (energy supply) and also reduce the pollution issue.

4) Brick kiln emissions, ref http://urbanemissions.info/model-tools/sim-air/dhaka-bangladesh.html
a) promote alternatives to bricks for construction
b) stop kilns with unclean smokestack emissions

5) Cooking fires with biomass (sticks, cow-dung patties, etc.) and warming fires (to keep people warm in cold weather) ref http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr178.pdf
a) Provide LPG and piped-gas connections as utility
b) Better cooking-stove and heater technology

6) Farmers burn crop residue on fields, people burn garbage everywhere
Ref http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/ngt-for-measures-to-snuff-out-crop-residue-burning/article6588808.ece and http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/garbage-burning-bangalore-health-effects — stop this by applying existing laws and promoting less-polluting alternatives.

I'm sure there are more sources, this is just a starter list ...

Is Bangalore short of water?

Read in the newspaper this morning that "For 110 villages, Cauvery hope dries up", ref http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/For-110-villages-Cauvery-hope-dries-up/articleshow/24506031.cms. It seems the BBMP (the municipal council for Bangalore) had asked permission to take more water from the Cauvery river to supply potable water to the huge area it added to itself in 2007.

Let's do the math: Bangalore should be exporting water to the Cauvery basin, not importing it.

 975  mm rainfall/year (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore)
 741  square km area (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruhat_Bengaluru_Mahanagara_Palike)
 722,104,500  cubic meters water/year (calculated by multiplying rainfall by the ground area)
 10,000,000  population estimate (8.5 million ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore)
 72,210.45  liters water/year/person
 197.84  liters water/day/person

So we should be able to support nearly 200 liters of water consumption per person per day for each of the 10 million people in the 741 square kilometer catchment area of BBMP ... if we invested in water management as civilized cities are supposed to do.

Interestingly, the BWSSB claims to supply  900 million liters per day (ref http://bwssb.org/growth/, claiming 900 MLD = million liters per day). That is 90 liters of water/day/person for 10 million people, and 95% of this is from the Cauvery River. That's a lot of water ... a typical single-family home in the USA uses 262 liters/day (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_consumption). With this level of supply already in place, we should also examine where all this water is going.