I love your writing and your earnest optimism. But technical feasibility and the Indian context are two very different entities. Do you really believe Indians can build long transmission networks at all, and then prevent industrial scale pilferage of the electricity along every centimeter of cable?!
India is making remarkable progress in expanding its transmission infrastructure through the Green Energy Corridor Project, which aims to integrate renewable energy into the grid efficiently.
Additionally, theft from transmission lines is rare, as they operate at very high voltages and are difficult and dangerous to tamper with. Most electricity theft occurs at the distribution level, which operates at lower voltages and is more accessible.
Also, id your concern is about protecting carbon sinks then all coal we have, especially in Jharkhand, has caused huge amounts of deforestation. Jharkhand means the land of forests and look what open pit mining has done. Basically it's a bit odd to present carbon reducing technologies as environmental harms while overlooking the order of magnitude larger environmental harms caused by fossil fuels. Let's base arguments in numbers and if we do that, there is absolutely no doubt that the environmental harm of fossil fuels is much larger than solar, and switching to solar will reduce environmental degradation.
Solar power can be installed on rooftops which needs no new land. Moreover, the point of this article is about air pollution. India has the worst air on the planet causing millions of premature deaths. Coal combustion is responsible for one-third of all air pollution. Replacing coal with solar will help solve this issue. If a patient is dying of a sickness, and there's a life saving drug, you don't quib about minor side effects.
1) Roof top solar is moot if most people lack roofs. I live in 14 story building in Delhi so the roof is shared by 14 flats.
2) Clean energy implies many fold expansion of mining of all kinds.
3) I have lived some years a few kms away from big open cast coal mine in Germany. You could not have supposed that the mine was so near. Air quality was excellent and so was greenary.
4) IN Germany 20-25 years ago, the city I was living in was surrounded by multiple coal-based power plants. Air quality was excellent.
I really recommend this article.* In short, the data shows declining costs for renewables but increasing costs of nuclear.
*https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
I love your writing and your earnest optimism. But technical feasibility and the Indian context are two very different entities. Do you really believe Indians can build long transmission networks at all, and then prevent industrial scale pilferage of the electricity along every centimeter of cable?!
Thank you for your engagement!
India is making remarkable progress in expanding its transmission infrastructure through the Green Energy Corridor Project, which aims to integrate renewable energy into the grid efficiently.
Additionally, theft from transmission lines is rare, as they operate at very high voltages and are difficult and dangerous to tamper with. Most electricity theft occurs at the distribution level, which operates at lower voltages and is more accessible.
This is a very thoughtful answer. Thank you. Has there been any progress on the nuclear front? I’m a big believer in nuclear, but is it practical?
Great question! I will do a future post on this to give this question proper treatment.
Solar power is greedy for land and everywhere you need to evict people wholesale for grid-scale solar park.
Plus, plants are carbon sinks and when you replace plants by solar panels, you lose on carbon fixing.
Also, id your concern is about protecting carbon sinks then all coal we have, especially in Jharkhand, has caused huge amounts of deforestation. Jharkhand means the land of forests and look what open pit mining has done. Basically it's a bit odd to present carbon reducing technologies as environmental harms while overlooking the order of magnitude larger environmental harms caused by fossil fuels. Let's base arguments in numbers and if we do that, there is absolutely no doubt that the environmental harm of fossil fuels is much larger than solar, and switching to solar will reduce environmental degradation.
Solar power can be installed on rooftops which needs no new land. Moreover, the point of this article is about air pollution. India has the worst air on the planet causing millions of premature deaths. Coal combustion is responsible for one-third of all air pollution. Replacing coal with solar will help solve this issue. If a patient is dying of a sickness, and there's a life saving drug, you don't quib about minor side effects.
1) Roof top solar is moot if most people lack roofs. I live in 14 story building in Delhi so the roof is shared by 14 flats.
2) Clean energy implies many fold expansion of mining of all kinds.
3) I have lived some years a few kms away from big open cast coal mine in Germany. You could not have supposed that the mine was so near. Air quality was excellent and so was greenary.
4) IN Germany 20-25 years ago, the city I was living in was surrounded by multiple coal-based power plants. Air quality was excellent.
Is solar self-sustaining? The production of panels and batteries involves fossil fuels, only it is done elsewhere so you can ignore it.
And what about nuclear? It doesn't need much land so you don't need to evict people wholesale.
Also, the health concerns with particulates are vastly overstated.