Col. Manoj Pal (RNA Live Desk)
Delhi: India has shown fast growing economies which is endeavouring towards generation of clean energy instead of energy production by use of fossil fuel. India has rapidly advanced towards solar power production to accelerate the decarbonisation of their energy systems without harming the economic growth and compromising on increased energy needs.
Though the pace of solar energy production has been impressive, but the increased need of energy is being met by use of gases. The use of fossil fuel especially the coal continued steadily and is not fallen which is a major source of carbon emission.
India increased the amount of electricity generated from coal as compared to year-on-year basis of 2021 to 2022. However, electricity generation by burning fuel has been decreased by 40%. India’s solar power production capacity has tripled during last 5 years and more solar powered stations are coming up. India ranked third globally in terms of solar power according to BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The Government is planning to double it’s capacity of solar power by 2025 as highlighted by the International Energy Agency.
Ideally, such rapid growth and change towards green energy supplies would result in reduced pollution from the energy producers. It is important to note that India is among the top three carbon emitting countries behind the United States and the China. Despite of above efforts by the government, carbon dioxide emission has been increased by 7% during the last 10 months in 2022 than in 2021 in same period.
The good news is that the carbon emission due to coal is not increased and also the gas-fired electricity has fallen sharply and recorded lowest since 2019. The reasons behind, are high prices of natural gases and non-availability due to disturbance in Europe. It has resulted in less import of LNG by 16% in the year 2022 according the ship tracking data by Kpler.
India has abundance of sun light and solar power adds to overall electricity supplies during the day. The needs of electricity in night is met by burning fossil fuel. Natural gas is considered good replacement for coal in India due to planned investment in gas import infrastructure and pipelines as well as policy support to scale down the use of high polluting coal use for energy generation.
Amid the Russia-Ukrain war for last 10 months and continuing, there are serious concern due to surge in prices and short supply of natural gases, the trend towards green and clean energy may reverse and jeopardise the progress made till now. If the situation continues and disruption in gas supply is not resolved soon; electricity producers had to rely on coal, undermining the environmental benefits of record-setting renewable energy expansions.
