India must manage its green energy needs to make climate transformation a success

Two recent stories underscored the complexity of the task we face. One, published in Bloomberg (biturl.top/mqy2Qr), highlighted the friction, high costs and inconveniences facing buyers and sellers of alternative energy, showing the absurdity of trying to forcibly wean the world off fossil fuels.

The second report, published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (biturl.top/3i6ram), found that despite obstacles to securing our clean energy supply chains, market forces are creating additional sources of significant energy demand, such as artificial intelligence (AI) data centres and cryptocurrency mining, which are exacerbating supply problems and undermining the net zero emissions goal.

The issues presented show that the problem of energy transition is twofold. Securing and integrating green energy supplies is not as straightforward as one might expect. Second, even if supplies were secured, this alone would not allow the world to progress towards net zero emissions.

If policymakers do not adjust demand, energy supply will have to continually catch up to exponentially increasing demand, indefinitely delaying the goal of achieving a net-zero emissions world.

It also accounts for the decline in fossil fuels’ share of global energy consumption by a paltry two percentage points over two decades — from 78.5% in 2004 to 76.5% in 2023 (biturl.top/emAVny).

The energy transition is easier said than done. Fossil fuels are integrated into every aspect of our technologies and production processes and are essential to many applications, too long to list exhaustively. There will be no Lego toys without fossil fuels (tinyurl.com/dppyhbws).

Therefore, the focus should not only be on replacing traditional energy sources, but also on encouraging the use of appropriate energy sources that will allow us to move to a low-emission path without compromising our development goals.

In India, recent budget announcements promoting nuclear power, more efficient thermal power plants, installation of solar panels on rooftops of over 10 million households and emission targets for the industrial sector reflect the government’s commitment to supply-side initiatives.

The budget also aims to promote the creation of pumped-storage power plants, which will enable a higher level of integration of renewable energy sources by addressing the problem of production intermittency and reducing the dependence on imports of mineral raw materials necessary for battery storage systems.

Second, while the world is focused on finding ways to green our energy use, it is ignoring the root of the problem: overconsumption. Current measures focus on greening the means to maintain current levels of consumption, while ignoring the fact that behavioral changes in consumption patterns, lifestyle choices, and resource use are necessary to reduce carbon emissions.

An example is the growing global obsession with electric vehicles, which are intended to replace petrol-powered vehicles with alternatives that require almost 10 times more minerals than conventional cars.

Mining and processing these minerals only requires more energy to sustain existing lifestyles. Along with the developed world’s mad rush to scale energy-hungry data centers, this is the epitome of misplaced priorities at worst and misplaced sequencing at best.

Policies adopted in the West have largely ignored the potential of promoting actions at the individual level and their impact on reducing overall emissions in the economy.

Although India has not yet reached the levels of per capita income and per capita emissions seen in the developed world, awareness created early on can be a powerful tool in the fight against climate change. The sum total of individual actions can contribute significantly to mitigation efforts.

Some of the actions we can take include paying attention to how we use energy (for example, setting the air conditioning temperature to 24-27 degrees Celsius), using public transport more often, eating more plant-based foods, wasting less water and keeping our surroundings clean.

Since the transport sector is a large consumer of fossil fuels, public transport systems must be a large part of the solution. Encouraging and subsidizing private mobility is counterproductive to the goal of reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

Investments in increasing the efficiency, reliability, comfort, accessibility and safety of public transport will be much more profitable. Comparative statistics show that more than 80% of urban residents in developed countries live within 500 meters of public transport.

By comparison, more than 50% of urban dwellers have easy access to public transport in Brazil and China (biturl.top/yArMna). In India, only 37% of urban dwellers have easy access to public transport.

To emulate their success, India needs to develop integrated transport systems that combine buses, metros and other modes of transport. Providing efficient mass transport infrastructure in urban areas is integral to reducing our energy intensity and achieving energy self-sufficiency.

Finally, demand-side policies should be complemented with measures to reduce excessive water (tinyurl.com/msm5tpp7) and energy consumption, such as data centers for artificial intelligence or cryptocurrency mining.

Regardless of whether these technologies are ultimately public goods, their insatiable demand for water and energy justifies taxing their resource use to ensure accountability for the threat they pose to the energy-ecology-environment balance. Demand management generates tangible and positive externalities.

By introducing a series of energy efficiency standards, vehicle fuel economy standards and industrial energy consumption standards, India has managed to generate annual energy savings of about 51 million tonnes of oil equivalent, which is 6.6 per cent of the country’s total primary energy supply.

In conclusion, imitating the Western model that has contributed to the current global climate crisis is not a viable path. India can lead by example, developing policies that focus on development goals while addressing both sides of the energy equation.

As the country continues to make progress in securing supplies, it must complement it with demand management inspired by the Indian ethos. Similarly, developed nations must introspect and develop ways to reduce their energy demands.

Failure to fulfil this obligation could lead to unprecedented financial and raw material problems, while at the same time increasing geopolitical tensions and dangers, which would inevitably lead to conflicts.

These are the personal views of the authors.