energy policy

Why India Needs a Different Way to Support Climate Research and Education

The answer can’t be tenure, which might just make things worse.

Climate science has been an accidental tourist at the debate dominating human discourse in the last two decades. Developing countries like India are being forced to strike a fine, but often impossible, balance between pushing aggressively for economic development and mitigating the unavoidable environmental damage that comes with such development (because of, among other reasons, reliance on dirty energy, unmanaged land use and natural resource exploitation).

Economic development however also facilitates higher investments in the human and computational resources required to advance weather and climate predictions as well as to setup educational and research institutions for research on climate, water, food, energy and health.

India has used a model whereby faculty members at academic institutions get a full year’s salary and the students are typically funded separately by government fellowships. The pressure to write proposals for grants should thus be minimal. However, the pressure to institute a US-like tenure system, with salaries corresponding only to teaching time (up to eight or nine months a year) and funding students through grants instead of government scholarships, has been on the rise. In fact, the scramble for grants has already precipitated greater stress among faculty members of all disciplines.

In this regard, the following alternative paradigm may be worth a shot: inviting the formation of multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional teams to identify and address climate change and related problems. So instead of having to negotiate time-consuming proposal calls, submissions and review panels, teams can present the problem they wish to solve and the methods they wish to use to do so to an expert panel empowered to rapidly assess and decide, together with inputs from other experts.

Such a setup could also render funding decisions more transparent as well as free India to focus its limited resources on becoming a weather- and climate-resilient nation.

Climate education also needs to face up to the urgent need for a climate-aware workforce and the fact that no institution can by itself provide the full suite of natural and social science aspects of climate awareness to all disciplines, including medicine and journalism. Institutions already have an opportunity to synergise courses through MOOCs and wired classrooms equipped to broadcast lectures.

Disciplinary boundaries within a given institution as well as cross-institutional PhD theses should be possible with a committee that facilitates research on climate solutions that India desperately needs. Competition drives innovation but competition doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game; India certainly can’t afford that to be the case between its research bodies.

This new paradigm can be justified by considering historical investments in education and the corresponding payoffs. India benefited the most among all countries by exploiting the outsourcing boom, due to its large skilled workforce, itself a product of many decades of investment in education. Employment tends to be the main criterion for judging success, so all science and engineering disciplines tend to drift towards the IT and financial sectors.

On the other hand, climate science tends to produce graduates that are neither easily attracted to other sectors and nor absorbed there. As India continues to produce more climate science PhDs, with each new IIT and IISER wishing to commence climate programmes, the government hasn’t been giving much thought to whether India really needs so many climate scientists.

As a result, we need to carefully deliberate on funding for climate education and climate research, together with the country’s needs in terms of its commitment to the Paris Agreement, such that we don’t end up overspending on one and underspending on the other. Indeed, India can’t afford to generate highly qualified but jobless climate scientists: employment prospects are limited around the world, not just in the subcontinent, especially to a few labs and universities and which typically focus on producing their own climate PhD-holders.

Despite the daily barrage of headlines about climate change and its impact, more climate scientists are not what the world really needs. This endless production line may in fact already be nearing the employment ceiling in the US and Europe.

I know from personal experience that the cycle of proposal-writing and producing PhDs has caused the number of proposals submitted in the US to balloon together with the failure rate (i.e. the ratio of proposals funded relative to the number submitted has dropped). Together with a drop in climate funding itself, thanks to the vagaries of the shifting political priorities, the situation is fairly dire. This is especially so for researchers whose entire salaries are drawn from proposals, as well as for faculty members who need to raise funds for a quarter or more of their own salaries as well as the funds to take on graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

As a result, most faculty members tend to spend up to 150% of their available time writing proposals! Ultimately, the labor cost incurred tends to be much higher than the funds being disbursed. Most of the community is thus spending time unproductively, and no business can survive if this modus operandus continues.

The unique thing about climate science is that it has already begun to negatively affect daily life as well as the country’s water, food, energy and health systems. Funding blue-sky research that may not be of immediate value to the country’s climate problems will have to be balanced with the practical needs of dealing with extant climate challenges. While drafting proposals offers that creative tension in a competitive environment, India will only do itself a disservice if it adopts a Western system blindly without considering all the pros and cons of its impact on the country’s own needs and ambitions.

Raghu Murtugudde is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic science and Earth system science at the University of Maryland. He is currently a visiting professor at IIT Bombay.

NITI Aayog’s Draft Energy Policy Shows We Still Remain a Country of Coal Men

The NITI Aayog’s draft national energy policy seeks to keep India’s economy heavily reliant on fossil fuels even in 2040.

Adani Power Company’s plant at Mundra in Gujarat. Credit: Reuters

India’s draft National Electricity Plan released by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) late last year got worldwide news coverage. The plan estimated that no new coal power plants would be required in India over the next decade till 2027, apart from the ones already under construction. A possible end for coal in India was much heralded and the plan gave further credence to India’s burgeoning climate leadership credentials. Fast forward a few months and India is being talked about as a reliable partner on climate change by Europe as the Trump administration starts the process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

However, the latest draft National Energy Policy released a fortnight ago by the government’s think tank, NITI Aayog, for public comment is giving worrying signals about India’s energy future. Unlike the CEA plan, which makes forecasts till 2027, the draft energy policy has calculated energy requirements till 2040 and estimates India would require 330 GW of coal capacity by 2040 in its ‘ambitious action’ pathway. Given that it agrees with the CEA estimates of no new coal capacity being required in the next decade, this would mean a plan to build at least 80 GW of new coal capacity between the years 2027-2040 in a best case (for clean energy) scenario.

In the business as usual scenario, the document plans for nearly 200 GW of new coal capacity between 2027-2040, taking the total to a whopping 441 GW. Just let that sink in. Investing in new coal capacity in 2017 looks questionable enough: the global political economy is moving decisively towards investments in renewable energy, new technologies such as battery storage are being introduced into grids, cheap natural gas is available, and most importantly, the carbon budget left to avoid dangerous levels of climate change is rapidly shrinking.

Planning to invest in coal capacity between 2027-2040 however is like detailing plans to invest in Nokia a decade after the first Android phones started to gain popularity in 2010. That is, if Nokia phones emitted toxic fumes that could kill you. Because climate mitigation is not the only reason to avoid building more coal fired power plants, there’s also the matter of air pollution. Half of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India and air pollution is estimated to cost India’s economy 3% of its GDP and cause 1.2 million deaths every year.

The idea to cycle coal power stations in sync with intermittent renewables is also the basis of the recently released ‘Greening the Grid’ report, which looks at how 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022 can be successfully integrated into the electricity for stable functioning. Unfortunately, ramping coal power stations to support variable renewable energy is the model used in Germany with disastrous results both financially and for the environment. While the report plans for low capacity factors and new financial models for coal power plants as renewables eat into their revenue stream, there is no mention of the extra pollution caused by the cycling of old coal power plants not built for flexible operation.

This is not all. Not happy with sabotaging the health of its own people, the plan also details India’s plan to become a net coal exporter in a few years despite little evidence that there would be many countries in the market for coal. This is a bit like planning to open a company to sell black and white TVs in the late 1970s.

India’s ambitious renewable energy targets have rightly been applauded around the world yet the NITI Aayog’s draft National Energy Policy would continue to keep India’s economy heavily reliant on fossil fuels even in 2040. Under the ‘ambitious action’ pathway, it estimates the fossil fuel share in India’s final energy mix will go down from 81% in 2012 to 78% in 2040. It’s pertinent perhaps at this point to remember that the NITI in NITI Aayog is an abbreviation for “National Institution for Transforming India”. The National Energy Policy therefore plays out as some sort of cruel self deprecation.

The good news is that none of this will probably happen. It is almost certain that the global and domestic political economy is not going to be conducive to a fresh round of coal power plant construction in a decade’s time. Also, in 2028, countries have to do a second ‘global stocktake’ under the Paris Agreement and reveal new and improved plans for climate action. Surely the prospect of Indian negotiators having to explain to Bangladesh and Maldives, two neighbours at risk of going under from sea level rise, that India plans to build another 100 odd coal power plants over the next decade would be beyond the pale.

Nevertheless, the fact that this is the policy advice being given to the Indian government for future planning is highly worrying. While meeting India’s rising energy demand and connecting millions who lack energy access to the grid will not be possible only through intermittent renewable sources, phasing out coal power plants in favour of gas fired combined cycle turbines, which have half the emissions and ramp better to integrate renewables, should be a cornerstone of India’s energy strategy. Exploring new technologies such as battery storage should also be on the agenda. This, combined with steady growth in indigenous nuclear power plants, is a winning formula for both the economy and climate action. Instead, NITI Aayog’s draft energy policy will lead to India being ‘locked in’ to 20th century technology at a time when the rest of the world is moving towards new energy systems.

Aniruddh Mohan is energy and climate policy researcher from India, currently based in Germany through the Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellowship.

Will Signing the Paris Agreement Constrain India’s Energy Policy?

India’s energy policy will have to change to be in tune with the international commitments on emission reduction.

A worker walks through the installed solar modules at the Naini solar power plant in Allahabad. Credit: Reuters/Jitendra Prakash/Files

Worries of India being left out of the negotiations for the Paris Agreement rulebook starting November have ended with the government moving to ratify the global climate change compact on October 2.

The ratification by adequate number of countries will bring the agreement into force. It will become operational in 2020. Between now and 2020, countries will set the international regulations and rules in place to implement the agreement.

At home, the Indian government has already embarked on the steps required to fulfil its commitments by setting up inter-ministerial committees to look at different commitments and obligations that will arise out of implementing the agreement. This, senior officials in the exercise believe, require new regulations, perhaps a law, to necessarily monitor and collect emission data from different sectors of the economy – which was so far only estimated for submission to the UN.

Internally, it will also have to set its energy policy in tune with the international commitments on greenhouse gas emission intensity reduction. India committed to ensuring 40% of its installed capacity by 2030 will be from non-fossil fuel sources – this means wind, solar, nuclear, biogas, large and small hydropower. The back end projections done to reach this number will now have to be integrated into the new energy policy that Niti Ayog is championing for the NDA government. An early draft of this energy policy has been prepared and shared within the government but it is yet to be refined.

The power ministry drew up two future scenarios for its energy supply and demand that meet the international climate commitments. It projected a steady annual growth rate of 8% growth in GDP between now and 2030 or a 8.5% growth rate under a scenario where the manufacturing sector grows at greater than the current speed. Under the enhanced manufacturing growth scenario, which also includes the NDA’s commitment of round-the-clock electricity to all, the ministry estimated electricity-to-GDP elasticity of 0.9, forecasting an electricity supply requirement of 3675 TWh and electricity demand of 3125 GWh in 2030.

The government has already committed to 100 GW of solar power by 2022 and 60GW of wind power capacity during the same period. This, the government projected would have to be enhanced by another 25-50 GW over the remaining eight years in case of solar and 15-30 GW in case of wind.

With the increase in the share of the renewable portfolio, the need for balancing power would have to be kept in mind, the ministry noted, to provide the bridge between the intermittent sources of power and the base load. Keeping in the mind the currently high costs of balancing power, the proposal is to either maintain the installed capacity of wind and sun at half of the rest or keep the actual generation from these two sources at 10-15%.

The power ministry has begun to now address the challenges of building adequate balancing power and the grid strength required to support such supply and demand character. The government will internationally require to look for lowered costs for this – storage being an expensive option.

The power ministry estimated that with the energy mix it plans and the energy efficiency mission operating well, it could do much better than the international commitment given of reducing the energy intensity of its GDP by 30-35% by 2030 below 2005 levels. It estimated that at optimum, the energy intensity could go down by as much as 50% from the existing 0.049 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per rupee of GDP to 0.024 by 2030. At this rate India’s per capita emissions of greenhouse gas would still remain below the existing global average, the energy and climate experts of the government estimated at 4.14 tonnes of carbon per capita. The non-fossil fuel capacity too, the government estimated could reach a much higher target than that internationally committed and hit past the 50% mark by 2030.

But the challenge, the internal assessment by the government noted, was the availability of international finance and reduced prices of technology – both of which currently seem difficult to come by. The last international meeting on climate finance under the UN negotiations showed that developed countries were ‘green-washing’ the existing finance instead of providing additional funds, say negotiators.

The international negotiations over next four years are also going to be strongly focussed on building a transparency and disclosure regime that can help countries such as India keep track of what are the real new funding routes opening for the climate or green energy sector and where it would have to deploy its own resources. At the same time, it would have to set its own house in order and set up a regulator to pull in standardised emission data from industry and different sectors of the economy to provide the inventory to the Paris Agreement on a regular basis. The negotiations over next four years will also set the terms for how deep the scrutiny of this data would be at the international level.

The international negotiations starting November 8 in Morocco are, in the least, expected to set out deadlines for these rules to be put in place and how the manner in which they will be devised.

Published by arrangement with Business Standard

Melting Arctic Ice Reveals New Ground, Highlighting Need For New Climate Policy

The move towards clean and sustainable energy policies needs to be accelerated as exploiting newly accessible resources would undermine the carbon-reduction strategy of the Paris accord.

Exploiting newly accessible resources in the Artic would undermine the carbon-reduction strategy of the Paris accord.

US secretary of state John Kerry waves as he arrives in Greenland with Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen for a tour of the Illulissat Icefjord and Jakobshavn Glacier, June 17, 2016, in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Credit: Reuters/Evan Vucci/Pool

Aboard the HDMS Thetis, Greenland: Standing near Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier, the reputed source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic over a century ago, US secretary of state John Kerry saw evidence of another looming catastrophe.

Giant icebergs broken off from the glacier seemed to groan as they drifted behind him, signaling eventual rising oceans that scientists warn will submerge islands and populated coastal region.

Briefed by researchers aboard a Royal Danish Navy patrol ship, Kerry appeared stunned by how fast the ice sheets are melting. He was struck by the more dire warnings he heard about the same process underway in more remote Antarctica.

“This has been a significant eye-opener for me and I’ve spent 25 years or more engaged in this issue,” Kerry said on the deck of the ship with Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen during a two-day visit that ended late on Friday.

Kerry made his first visit to this part of the Arctic to witness the effects of climate changes and press the need to implement the Paris climate accord. He has called it “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction”.

The US chairs the Arctic Council, a forum created in 1996 to tackle issues arising from increased Arctic activity.

The landmark Paris agreement included commitments by most nations to reduce carbon emissions contributing to climate change but lacked any enforcement mechanism, leaving open who will pay costs that will rise into the trillions of dollars.

Current US targets for cuts in greenhouse gases by the Obama administration for 2025 fall far short of what scientists say is needed to rein in rising temperatures.

“What we did in Paris … is critical now to be implemented, but it’s not even enough,” he said. “We have to all move faster in order to embrace new energy policies that are sustainable, that are clean, all of which are there for the using if governments and private sector make the right choices.”

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he would renegotiate US’s role in the climate agreement if he becomes president.

Human contribution to climate change

By visiting Greenland and the Arctic research post at Ny-Alesund in Norway’s far-north, Kerry focused on some of the most visible impacts of climate change.

“There is no mistaking that we are contributing to climate change, we human beings have choices that can undo the damage,” said Kerry. “There is profound change throughout the Arctic.”

Jakobshavn is one of the world’s biggest glaciers and the most active in the Arctic, where ice sheets are melting at a rate faster than ever before.

David Holland, a New York University scientist studying changes on Jakobshavn, explained that the glacier could retreat by about 100 km over the next 100 years if the thawing of its ice sheet continues at its current pace.

If Greenland’s ice sheets all melted, that would raise sea levels by about 6 metres over thousands of years. That is modest compared to what could happen if Antarctica thaws, said Holland.

Two developments in recent days show the magnitude of the challenge. For the first time in 4 million years, levels of carbon dioxide – a heat-trapping gas produced by burning fossil fuels – hit 400 parts per million in Antarctica, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The threshold shows the rising levels of climate pollution.

Last week, temperatures in Greenland’s capital hit a record 24.8 degrees Celsius for a single day in June, according to records dating back to 1958. Worldwide, 2016 has set repeated monthly records after a record warm 2015.

“Gigantic transformation”

“This is gigantic transformation taking place,” said Kerry. “You can see it with the naked eye, as you see where the ice has retreated from just in the last 15, 20 years, where the marks are still left.”

The Arctic is warming at about twice the global average, partly because the melting of the ice cover has revealed darker ground and water underneath that soak up even more heat.

“Things are changing and we are perhaps the last generation that can do something about it,” said Jensen.

This new access to the ground underneath has opened the Arctic to increased political and commercial competition, including exploration for oil and minerals by countries that used to have no access to the region.

Aboard a research vessel at Ny-Alesund, the northernmost non-military post in the world, Kerry warned that exploiting newly accessible resources would undermine the carbon-reduction strategy of the Paris accord. He also said the public was still not sufficiently conscious of the challenge ahead.

“Even where there is awareness, the steps people are taking are not big enough, fast enough. We have a huge distance to travel,” he said while visiting Ny-Alesund.

Temperatures there are now between six to 11 degrees warmer than normal, said Jan-Gunner Winther, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, who wonders whether the changes signal a tipping point.

“We have more questions than answers,” says Winther, “We are in the midst of a change that we have no comparison with in history because it is so much more rapid,” he said.

(Reuters)