India’s coal plant plans conflict with climate commitments
Proposed plants could jeopardize target of avoiding 1.5 degrees Celsius of mean global warming
AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION WASHINGTON, DC — India will not be able to meet its Paris climate agreement commitments in the coming years if it carries through with plans to build nearly 370 coal-fired power plants, a new study finds.
“India is facing a dilemma of its own making,” said Steve Davis, associate professor of Earth system science at the University of California Irvine and coauthor of a new study published today in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “The country has vowed to curtail its use of fossil fuels in electricity generation, but it has also put itself on a path to building hundreds of coal-burning power plants to feed its growing industrial economy.”
According to Davis and his colleagues, India has pledged to the international community to reduce its emissions intensity–the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of gross domestic product–by as much as 35 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, and to increase the percentage of renewable energy in its power grids. The construction of 65 gigawatts worth of coal-burning generation with an additional 178 gigawatts in the planning stages would make it nearly impossible for India to meet those climate promises, the researchers say.
Further, by developing all of the planned coal-fired capacity, India would increase the share of fossil fuels in its energy budget by 123 percent. If the country also met their goal to produce at least 40 percent of their power from non-fossil sources in 2030, the total power being generated would greatly exceed its own projected future electricity demand, according to the new study.
“In looking closely at all of India’s active coal plant proposals, we found they are already incompatible with the country’s international climate commitments and are simply unneeded,” said Christine Shearer, a senior researcher with CoalSwarm, a research institute in San Francisco, California and lead author of the new study. “These plants therefore risk either locking out the country’s renewable electricity goals or becoming stranded assets operating well below optimal rates and leading to financial losses.”
“India’s Paris pledges might be met if they built these plants and only ran them 40 percent of the time, but that’d be a colossal waste of money, and once built there’d be huge incentives to run the plants more despite their contrary climate goals,” Davis said.
India relies heavily on coal; 70 percent of the country’s power comes from plants burning the fuel. Because of its historically low cost and accessibility (India has large domestic coal reserves), it is seen by the country as an aid in its quest to become a manufacturing and economic power and a way to provide electricity to the roughly 300 million people in the country who don’t have it.
But the researchers stress there are significant downsides to the fossil fuel habit. In addition to spewing harmful soot and other types of air pollution into the atmosphere, coal-burning power plants are the largest carbon dioxide source on the planet, making up 41 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions in 2015.
Choices individual countries make with regard to their energy mix have a global impact, according to the study’s authors.
“India’s proposed coal plants will almost single-handedly jeopardize the internationally agreed-upon climate target of avoiding 1.5 degrees Celsius of mean global warming,” Davis said.
The researchers are not convinced coal is the way to go for India, pointing to the example set by the only country in the world with a larger population, China. India’s neighbor to the north started building too many coal plants at the height of its economic boom. Now it’s having to suspend hundreds of unneeded plants that were under development, Shearer said.
Further, India’s own draft National Energy Plan, released in December 2016, states no further coal power capacity beyond that currently under construction will be needed until at least 2027–although it remains unclear what the country will do about its many proposed coal plants. “India should take a hard look at these coal proposals and avoid the mistakes of China,” Shearer said.
Turning the ship around will be a challenge for the world’s largest democracy. Davis said one of the problems may be communication.
“The people going to the international meetings to participate in climate negotiations aren’t the same one that are permitting new power plants in the country,” he said. “Maybe this paper will help bring that conflict out into the open.”
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WHAT!!! Griff has been telling us for months that India has given up on coal power.
Don’t tell me that Griff has been lying to us.
India says the right things at all the right climate conferences. So all will be forgiven.
To the surprize of absolutely no one who has been paying attention to India’s power generation policies.
Methinks India has conned the green con artists! The Mark has conned The Team! Bravo, India! Bravo!
The fact that China over estimated how quickly it’s economy would grow and thus doesn’t need as many power plants as they thought they would a few years ago, isn’t evidence that China is giving up on coal.
It’s merely evidence that the central planners goofed, and are now correcting.
(Which I should congratulate them for, it’s rare for central planners to admit that they have goofed. In the old Soviet Union days, they would have continued to build the plants and then moth balled them when done.)
One final point, the soot problem with coal was solved over 40 years ago. If these researchers don’t know that they are incompetent. If they do know that, then they are liars.
Yes, that is quite a dilemma; on the one hand, you can have a thriving, prosperous economy along with the guilt of not keeping your “promises”, and on the other you get to have a faltering economy but you get to feel good and can shame others (like the US) for not keeping theirs. That is a problem. What on earth will they do? Maybe they should ask some poor people.
“The researchers are not convinced coal is the way to go for India”—yes, by all means India, make the same mistakes the USA does and listen to researcher who very often seem clueless when it comes to the real world.
“only ran them 40 percent of the time, but that’d be a colossal waste of money”—that’s never a problem with wind or solar. In fact, wind gets paid to not produce. So why is it a problem with coal?
“In looking closely at all of India’s active coal plant proposals, we found they are already incompatible with the country’s international climate commitments and are simply unneeded,” said Christine Shearer, a senior researcher with CoalSwarm, a research institute in San Francisco, California and lead author of the new study. “These plants therefore risk either locking out the country’s renewable electricity goals or becoming stranded assets operating well below optimal rates and leading to financial losses.”
CoalSwarm is a biased anti-coal organization. Why didn’t the story mention that – because the AGU has been captured by the econuts? And who gave these fools the right to say what is needed in India? She has a PhD in Sociology yet claims to know how these non-existent plants will operate at a loss.
http://coalswarm.org/about-coalswarm/our-team/
What a load of crap.
Paragraph 9: “…[coal] is seen by the country as an aid in its quest to become a manufacturing and economic power and a way to provide electricity to the roughly 300 million people in the country who don’t have it.”
Paragraph 14: “Further, India’s own draft National Energy Plan, released in December 2016, states no further coal power capacity beyond that currently under construction will be needed until at least 2027…”
So…are the plants currently under construction going to meet the needs of the 300 million, or did some wise person writing the National Energy Plan just decide those needs don’t matter?
I don’t think that coal plants are responsible for 41 % of all CO2 emissions, but only those emissions from power plants. There are a LOT of automobiles on this planet you know. These alarmists always behave as if there are no new no-carbon technologies close at hand. Electric cars and molten salt nuclear reactors will make these predictions of the world’s energy future look totally non-sensical. India is also developing their own version of a molten salt (Thorium) reactor
and have always planned extensive nuclear power capacities.
Based on climate models that are laughably inaccurate and totally incorrect and cannot show the impact of India’s coal burning on atmospheric temperatures – Davis has the gall to demand that India’s economy should be crippled? Perhaps Davis should explain to the poor in India the basis on which he thinks they should remain poor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME . this is a farce. Pres Trump, tell your daughter to go make a dress or something. Get as far away from this nonsense as quickly as possible.
I have a theory. Hem hem hem …
They moved the goalposts to 1.5°C because they knew that the old goal of 2°C was never going to happen.
If they’d actually analysed India’s Paris pledge, they would have worked out that this increase in coal power was exactly what was implied.
Some of us said this at the time.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/indias-climate-plan-will-triple-emissions-by-2030/
India and China become the new economic giants, while those of us in the West become the new Third World, based on a non-existent scare.
India’s “commiittment” in the Paris Agreement [treaty!] is actually LESS than a business as usual decline in carbon dioxide intensity. They never intended to do anything at all.
Only nuclear can replace our current energy requirements provided by fossil fuels unless we massively degrade our lifestyles. That won’t happen. Convincing developing countries they are stuck in the bottom cycle of lifestyle evolution won’t work. Convincing developed countries to downscale for “the good of the planet” (when it’s highly questionable) won’t work either. There’s a point of diminishing returns throwing money at wind and solar and the outcome will always be the same….. wind and solar are not sustainable (apologies for using that term).
India alone has a whole US-population of people without electrical service (approx 300 million, US approx 312 million). . That means no lights, no refrigeration, no business…..
It is inhumane to leave them without access to power — the UN recognizes this.
They will build whatever system they can to supply that need for their people….if they have coal, they will burn it for power.
If they can develop more affordable nuclear, they will build that.
They will not be swayed by Western environmentalism over the needs of their people.
Jajajajajajaja
Time to buy shares of KOL ETF.
Gosh, all these darn countries acting in their own best interests.
Here’s the thing – if you’ve got cheap affordable power sources, people WILL eventually use them – especially if there’s an advantage in it.
So if India is out, are all other countries off the hook?
To put all earth’s energy consumption in perspective, all of humanity currently uses the equivalent of about 3 Cubic Miles of Oil equivalent energy. The cubic mile of oil (CMO) is a unit of energy. A CMO/yr is about 5.084 TW continuous, making current world energy use around 15 TW. The volume occupied by one trillion U.S. gallons is about one cubic mile. Hard to visualize which is why the CMO was created, and then broken down by fuel supply as to what percentage of each type of energy, (nuclear, NG, renewables for e.g.) All oil consumption is currently about 1.1 CM while coal is about .75 CM, and NG is about .75 CMO and growing.
That is 2.6 CMO, out of a total of about 3 CMO, which all other forms of energy are the .4 CMO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil A good easy read to understanding of the CMO, which is the equivalent of the energy contained in 1 cubic mile of oil. Have a quick boo at this, because it really puts in perspective how reliant we have been and will continue to be, on the use of fossil fuels. And why it will be so hard to transition to any other fuel source, since there is currently no alternative. It is also a good thing that we have not yet reached peak oil, and probably won’t until at least 2030, and if all non traditional oil is exploited, then peak oil is still probably 2050 or even further out depending on price of oil, price to extract and therefore how much economic fossil fuels are available going forward. We have time to transition to something else, although 33 years is nothing in the scheme of time.
The Wiki article is based upon 2006-2008 figures so will be a hair smaller on the total energy equivalent for 2017 and renewables will be a fraction higher due to the build out of mainly wind and solar the last 10 years. But in the scheme of things, renewables are very small fraction on a total global energy consumption basis. Which is why there is no chance that renewables will not make much of a dent in getting off fossil fuels anytime soon. And why we are very lucky that CO2 from fossil fuel burning has little impact on warming of the planet, because we are not giving up fossil fuel anytime soon. As evidenced by this article on India’s increased use of coal, and China’s manipulation of data regarding use of coal.
Which is why when fossil fuels go up in price some day (probably sooner than later) it will really take a hit to the economy in taking a lot of money out of the economy for basic energy. And is why I am long oil since the latest price decrease had more to do with politics (punishing Russia and Iran the last 3 years) than it did a real over supply. We will hit peak oil some day, and with an increasing hungry planet for energy, this is a future problem that should not be ignored now, but plan for an eventual transition to electricity via HVDC power lines delivering high capacity electricity at a distance without a lot of loss. Advanced Nuclear or Fusion will probably be that base load energy we require, and future carbon based renewable fuels can be synthesized out of CO2 itself. Carbon based renewable fuels will be with us forever, because its power density is so hard to achieve with any other known source, especially for things like jet engines.
$60 Trillion in new spending on traditional renewables will not replace fossil fuels, especially for air, or ground or sea transport. Especially given that a solar farm has a lifespan of 20 years and diminishing output while running out of useful production life. And same for a wind farm. Hydro, both large and small, is maybe a different story since is firm power when water is available, has a high power density and basic infrastructure once built will last a 100 years, if not in perpetuity. $100 Billion per year welfare payments to the third world wouldn’t actually even do much, even if it were spent honestly. There are smart renewables, and then there is dumb renewables. Let’s put a brake on dumb renewables, and let it pay its own way without subsidies or some plan to rob 11 advanced western countries for 200 countries to piss away down some 3rd world black hole with the Paris Climate Agreement. It’s time to call a spade a spade.
India has always made it clear that their own development priorities will take preference over hypocritical western-environmentalist bleating about global warming and carbon dioxide. Quite right too.
India will be OK; the target of the West’s death-wish is the USA.