India can meet its energy needs without nuclear plants: Study

October 4, 2012

 

nuclear_plantsBangalore, October 4: India's energy needs can be met entirely by solar and other renewable sources, says a new study by two professors at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore.  Their report published in the journal Current Science may add ammunition to the anti-nuclear agitation in India.

 

The analysis by Hiremath Mitavachan and Jayaraman  Srinivasan of  IISc's Divecha Centre for Climate Change overturns the argument that nuclear power is essential for India because the country does not have enough land to exploit the potential of solar energy in India.

 

According to their study, 4.1 percent of the total uncultivable and waste land area in India  is enough to meet the projected annual demand of 3,400 terawatt-hour (TWh) by 2070 by solar energy alone (1 terawatt-hour per year equals 114 megawatts). The land area required will be further reduced to 3.1 percent "if we bring the other potential renewable energy sources of India into picture", they claim. They conclude that land availability is not a limiting constraint for the solar source as believed.

 

They say their calculations are based on present-day solar photovoltaic (PV) technology and do not include higher efficiencies achieved by new solar cells. Neither have they considered roof-top PV systems that can be established without any need for additional land.

 

The IISc researchers' conclusion is in conformity with that of a report prepared last year  by the Australian government which said: "There is more than enough suitable land in India, with high direct beam solar, to meet the entire nation's electricity needs in principle."

 

Convinced that sunlight differs from other energy sources in the way it uses the land, the researchers compared the land-use pattern of three primary energy sources - coal, nuclear and hydro - with solar energy.  They then calculated the percentage of India's land area that would be required to meet the future projected energy demand. Coal power plants not only transform the land around the facility but also require land for mining coal and its upstream processing, the authors note.  An average dam displaces 31,340 persons and submerges 8,748 hectares of land. The direct land footprint of a nuclear power plant includes power plant area, buffer zone, waste disposal area and the land that goes into mining uranium.

 

"Our study shows that solar power plants require less land in comparison to hydro-power plants and are comparable with coal and nuclear energy power generation when life-cycle transformations are considered," Srinivasan said.

 

While nuclear and fossil fuel-based technologies must continuously transform some land to extract the fuels or dispose of the waste, this is not the case with solar plants. In fact, the same land used for PV solar power plants can be utilised for other purposes like grazing.

 

The roof-top solar power technology, along with that proposed by IISc professors, "will be able to meet most of the electricity demand, and has the potential to transform the power sector," says Shankar Sarma, a power policy analyst  and author of forthcoming book "Integrated Power Policy."

 

Atul  Chokshi of the IISc Department of Materials Engineering and an expert on solar energy agrees. He reported recently  that a three kilowatt  rooftop solar panel system on the 425 million households   can generate a total energy per year 1900 TWh - half of the projected energy demand by 2070.

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Agencies
February 6,2020

Bijnor, Feb 6: Apprehensions over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are now so strong that a team of economic enumerators were allegedly manhandled in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor district and faced stiff resistance from the people.

A team of the economic census enumerators in Bijnor, on Wednesday, sent a letter to the District Magistrate narrating the difficulties they are facing in some parts "due to misinformation".

District magistrate Ramakant Pandey, when contacted, said that he had asked the department concerned to complete the work on time. "If teams are facing any problems, we will sort it out at once. No hurdle in economic census will be tolerated," he said.

According to District Economic and Statistics Officer, Harendra Malik: "Our teams are facing protests in minority-dominated areas as people are linking it to the NRC. Some team members were manhandled.

"We have now asked village heads and municipality chairmen to help our teams in the survey and convince the people. Our teams are trying to convince them that it is a routine work which is being carried out for years. It has nothing to do with the NRC or CAA."

He further said that they plan to hold a series of meetings with people's representatives, including village heads and chairmen, so that they could put an end to this confusion.

The seventh economic census was flagged off in Bijnor by District Magistrate Ramakant Pandey on January 6. There are around 3,000 enumerators and 569 supervisors engaged in the census being carried out under the supervision of economic and statistics department. It is expected to be completed by March 31.

The economic census is aimed at collecting data about the financial status of people engaged in unorganised sector.

Meanwhile, the areas where the enumerators are facing stiff resistance include Kalhari village in Najibabad block, Amipur Narain village in Mohammadpur Devmal block, Anisa Nangli village in Dwarka block and the Mirzapur Bella village in Jalilpur block.

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News Network
March 20,2020

New Delhi, Mar 20: The coronavirus pandemic will leave behind a global recession with small businesses, self-employed and daily wagers taking the worst hit, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said on thursday.

"The virus will eventually be conquered, but it will have left behind a global recession. The costs of that are incalculably high at this time. The most fearsome toll will be on small businesses, the self-employed & those whose lives depend on meagre daily wages," Mahindra said in a tweet.

Apart from the toll on lives, the legacy of Covid-19 may well be deaths due to stress, loss of livelihoods, a rise in homelessness and in extreme situations, civil unrest, he added.

"The only global experience that has lessons for us in the current situation is the last world war. In the aftermath of WW2, the US came up with the Marshall plan to revive Europe, effectively a giant fiscal pump-priming," Mahindra said.

In the US, the government dramatically dismantled regulations and opened up the economy to trade and these actions led to a boom-cycle that stretched to 1975, he added.

"This time, there will be no victors, only the vanquished. So every country will have to create its own post ‘virus war” marshall plan & take care of those in society who are hit the hardest. Perhaps we too can build the foundations of a sustained global growth cycle," Mahindra said.

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News Network
July 16,2020

New Delhi, Jul 16: With India's economic growth sputtering, the Reserve Bank of India was expected to maintain a rate-cutting cycle, but an uptick in near-term inflation could give the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee reason to pause for now.

Having cut its key lending rate by an aggressive 115 basis points (bps) in 2020, on top of 135 bps cuts in 2019, the RBI so far has had little success in spurring credit growth amid varying degrees of lockdowns across India.

Some economists and market insiders argue it may be prudent for the MPC, the policy committee, to hold its fire when it meets early next month.

"It's probably too early to administer a demand stimulus. The RBI still has room to cut rates, but we probably want to be more cautious of the timing," said Venkat Pasupuleti, portfolio manager at Dalton Investments.

"Maybe they should wait a quarter to see how things pan out once the lockdown situation is eased further."

Market participants have factored in at least a 25 bps rate cut by the MPC on August 6 while analysts are predicting a total 50-75 bps cuts over the rest of the fiscal year that runs to March 31.

The spike in the retail inflation rate above the RBI's mandated 2%-4% target range is another reason for the central bank to take a breather, analysts say.

Annual retail inflation rose to 6.09% in June, compared to 5.84% in March and sharply above a 5.30% median forecast in a Reuters poll of economists.

Rahul Bajoria, an economist at Barclays, said the spike in both consumer and wholesale prices "could lead to a tempering in enthusiasm for material front-loaded policy support from here on."

Almost all economists however agreed the RBI cannot move away from its accommodative stance or call an end to the rate cutting cycle just yet.

India's economy grew at 3.1% in the March quarter - an eight year low - and some economists have predicted a contraction of more than 20% in the June quarter and a contraction of up to 5% in the fiscal year.

"Even in the event of a pause, we think the RBI and MPC would want to hold out the promise of more cuts," said A. Prasanna, economist with ICICI Securities.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in a recent speech the need of the hour is to restore confidence, preserve financial stability, revive growth and recover stronger, suggesting inflation concerns are unlikely to deter the downward trajectory for rates too soon.

"The August policy decision would boil down to a judgment call over whether RBI can maintain easy monetary and financial conditions without the aid of a token rate cut," Prasanna said. 

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