essay on electricity crisis in india

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• Published On May 4, 2022 at 10:08 AM IST

• Updated On May 4, 2022 at 10:08 AM IST

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Essay on Power Crisis in India | Electricity Crisis in India

Technological advancement and growing population demands more electricity and the production of electricity is less as per demand which leads power crisis in India . Here we have written an essay on power crisis in India where I tried to include all important points which is relevant to issue of power crisis or electricity crisis. Hope you found this essay on power crisis in India helpful for your exam preparation.

Essay on Power Crisis in India

Recently, India witnessed acute power shortage due to higher demand and unavailability of adequate coal supplies. More than 100 million units of energy shortage noted during the month of April, 2022. States of Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, UP, Bihar and MP were the most affected states.

India is second largest country in terms of population where uses of electricity is rising day by day. In today’s India, electricity has reached in the farflunged areas also and people getting benefits from it. Electricity plays an important role in overall development including technological development of the society and that of the country. However, technological development requires more electricity. Electricity need of many industries, railways, agriculture, and household uses is growing day by day.

The current demand of power is barely a little over half of India’s total installed power generation capacity of approximately 400 GW. However, due to unavailability of coals supplies these power shortage are witnessed. The shortage of coal supply occurs almost every year and despite various measures, India is not succeeded in overcoming the problem. To address the issue of power shortage underlying issues and structural problems are need to be shorted out and for the same the solution is to make sure coal power plants stockpile enough fuel. Download this  Essay in PDF: Click Here .

India's Coal Dependency for Power

As of September 2021, thermal power which include power generated from burning coal, gas and petroleum comprised 60% of India’s installed capacity in power generation. 210 GW of the total 396 GW Coal-based power generation capacity accounts for about 53% of India’s total power capacity as on March 2022. Presently about 20% of India's thermal coal requirements are imported.

Causes of the Power Crisis?

Advancement of the technology and revival of economic activities after Covid-19 disruptions propelled electricity demand. In April 2022, average daily energy requirement increased to 4,512 million units while it was 3,941 million units in April 2021 registering a 14.5% growth. Use of electricity in  many industries, railways, agriculture, and household are increased. The thermal power plants of India are also running much below their capability which could have managed this demand surge by ramping up thermal generation.

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Cash flow problem in the electricity sector is also one the reasons of power crisis. The inability of discoms to recover costs has resulted in huge outstanding dues to power generation companies. As a result power generation companies default on payments to Coal India Limited (CIL) which creates problem in coal supplies. This reflects both operational inefficiency and poor recovery of dues from consumers. Due to war in Ukraine international spot market coal prices have soared to over $400 a tonne from around $50 a tonne in 2020.

How power crisis can be addressed

To address the problem of power crisis in India, there is a need to change our planning and policies from one of primarily managing scarcity to one of flexible resiliency. Policies should be prepared focusing the long-term structural solutions that address distribution financial viability and a robust mechanism for resource planning.  Focus should be given to ensure that power plants work efficiently.

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A strategic approach to low-cost energy transition like renewable energy and opportunities for diversification in energy mix is crucial to address persisting power shortages. More focus should be given by ramping up production from renewable energy sources for long term power security.

As India's power demand is set to rise substantially and become more variable. It is time to act for the long-term resilience of India’s power sector. Renewable sources of power generation should be ramp up for production of electricity to fulfil the need of growing demand of power.

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An old man wakes on the floor of a hut in a village in southern India. He is wrapped in a thin cotton blanket. Beside him, music wails softly on a transistor radio. A small wood fire smolders on the floor, filling the space with a light haze; above it,the bamboo timbers of the hut’s roof are charred to a glossy black.

The man’s name is Mallaiah Tokala, and he is the headman of Appapur village, in the Amrabad Tiger Reserve in Telangana state. On his forehead he wears the vibhuti , the sacred daub of white ash. He is uncertain of his exact age, but he is well into his 10th decade. He has lived in this village his whole life, a period that encompasses the tumultuous 20th-century history of India: the rise of Gandhi, the Salt March, the end of the Raj and the coming of independence, Partition and the bloodshed that followed, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the dawning of a new era of sectarian violence and terrorism. And now he has lived long enough to witness the coming of electricity to Appapur, in the form of solar-powered lights and TVs and radios.

On the wall of the hut a single LED lightbulb glows softly, connected through the roof to a black cable that stretches to a 100-watt solar panel on the roof of a concrete house nearby. It is a direct outcome of the policies of the central government, a thousand miles to the north in Delhi. Appapur is a “solar village,” one of the showcases for the government’s drive to bring solar power to small, unelectrified villages across India.

It’s a huge task. At least 300 million of India’s 1.25 billion people live without electricity, as the villagers of Appapur did until a year ago. Another quarter-billion or so get only spotty power from India’s decrepit grid, finding it available for as little as three or four hours a day. The lack of power affects rural and urban areas alike, limiting efforts to advance both living standards and the country’s manufacturing sector.

Since he took power in May 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made universal access to electricity a key part of his administration’s ambitions. At the same time, he has pledged to help lead international efforts to limit climate change. Among other plans, he has promised to increase India’s renewable-energy capacity to 175 gigawatts, including 100 gigawatts of solar, by 2022. (That’s about the total power generation capacity of Germany.) And therein lies India’s energy dilemma.

Already the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, India is attempting to do something no nation has ever done: build a modern industrialized economy, and bring light and power to its entire population, without dramatically increasing carbon emissions. Simply to keep up with rising demand for electricity, it must add around 15 gigawatts each year over the next 30 years. The country gets most of its electricity from aging, dirty coal-fired plants. (It has little domestic production of oil or natural gas.) And its energy infrastructure is in dismal shape. The obsolescence of its power grid was demonstrated by a massive 2012 outage that left more than 600 million people in the dark and drew attention to a utility sector in disarray, with an estimated $70 billion of accumulated debt.

If current trends continue and India follows the traditional path in which emissions increase as living standards rise, it will be disastrous not only for Indians but for the entire planet. By way of illustration, consider what’s happened in China. From 1980 to 2010, while the country’s per capita GDP grew by $193, to $4,514, its emissions per capita grew from 1.49 tons per year to more than six tons per year (these figures come from the World Bank and the CAIT Climate Data Explorer , maintained by the World Resources Institute). China is now the world’s largest emitter of carbon. India’s per capita emissions as of 2012, the last year for which figures are available, were 1.68 tons per year, and its 2014 GDP was $1,631 per person. Its population is expected to grow by another 400 million people over the next three decades, bringing it to 1.7 billion by 2050. If India follows a path similar to China’s, that will add another eight billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year—more than total U.S. emissions in 2013. (For a look at how improved health care and medical technologies are affecting population growth worldwide, see our infographic “ More Life, Less Death .”)

Such growth would easily swamp efforts elsewhere in the world to curtail carbon emissions, dooming any chance to head off the dire effects of global climate change. (Overall, the world will need to reduce its current annual emissions of 40 billion tons by 40 to 70 percent between now and 2050.) By 2050, India will have roughly 20 percent of the world’s population. If those people rely heavily on fossil fuels such as coal to expand the economy and raise their living standards to the level people in the rich world have enjoyed for the last 50 years, the result will be a climate catastrophe regardless of anything the United States or even China does to decrease its emissions. Reversing these trends will require radical transformations in two main areas: how India produces electricity, and how it distributes it.

Coal conundrum

The man charged with solving this puzzle is Piyush Goyal, the minister of power. (His full title is Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy.) With his political inheritance (his father, Ved Prakash Goyal, was a member of parliament and the minister of shipping under the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the early 2000s), his suave manner, and his investment banking background, Goyal, 51, represents a new generation of Indian politicians from the Bharatiya Janata Party  (BJP) who have come to power during the decline of the once-dominant Congress Party. Despite the BJP’s origins in the Hindu nationalist party that emerged in opposition to the more secular Congress Party, these younger politicians tend to be pragmatists, seeking to encourage economic growth through neoliberal policies such as deregulation and privatization of state industries. Since his appointment, Goyal has emerged as a champion of renewable energy, calling for investments of $100 billion in renewables and another $50 billion in upgrading the country’s faltering grid. Almost every week he appears in the newspapers cutting the ribbon on a new solar power plant or wind farm or hydropower installation.

But he has also remained a staunch supporter of coal. He was exultant at the passage of a bill in March to guide expansion of the country’s domestic coal-mining industry, saying it would boost the economy and create thousands of new jobs. While prices for electricity from renewable sources have fallen sharply in recent years, coal remains the cheapest source of power, and India’s coal industry has embarked on a building boom, doubling installed capacity since 2008. India consumes around 800 million tons of coal a year and could more than double that number by 2035, according to the World Energy Outlook from BP. To meet that demand, and to limit coal imports, Goyal plans to increase domestic coal production to 1.5 billion tons a year by 2020, from 2015 levels of 660 million tons. “Increasing domestic production of coal will be a big step towards long-term energy security of India,” he said in a January tweet.

“India’s conundrum is a coal conundrum,” says Jairam Ramesh, a former minister of the environment. Ramesh, the chief negotiator for India at the international climate change talks in Cancún, Mexico, in 2010, is the author of Green Signals: Ecology, Growth, and Democracy in India . Last August, he welcomed me to the cramped, book-lined study in his home in Delhi and took me through the numbers on India’s energy resources.

Almost 70 percent of India’s electricity today comes from coal-fired plants. About 17 percent comes from hydropower, much of it from large dams in the northeast. Another 3.5 percent comes from nuclear. That leaves about 10 percent, depending on daily conditions, from renewables—mostly wind farms.

Over the next 25 years, “with the most aggressive assumptions in terms of renewables, we could go up to 18 or 20 percent from renewables,” Ramesh told me. “Hydro takes longer—it involves displacement of people and submergence of land, but we could expect that 17 percent contribution to go up to 25 percent. Nuclear is at 3.5 percent right now and, under the most aggressive assumptions, could go up to 5 or 6 percent. So under the best scenario—the most aggressive programs for nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind—bloody coal will still be at 50 percent.” In other words, while low- or zero-carbon sources would make up a greater portion of India’s energy supply, overall carbon emissions would nearly double: from around 2.1 billion tons in 2014 to more than four billion tons by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.

That’s a discouraging conclusion. The response from Modi and Goyal has been to embark upon the world’s most aggressive capacity-building program for low-carbon power generation. It was soon after taking office that Modi announced he would seek to add 100 gigawatts of solar power capacity by 2022. (India has about four gigawatts of solar capacity today.) Fifty-seven gigawatts of the planned new capacity is supposed to come in the form of utility-scale solar, including so-called “ultra mega” projects, ranging in size from 500 megawatts up to 10 gigawatts. “Ultra mega” hardly does justice to the scale of such gargantuan parks; the world’s largest solar plant, the Desert Sunlight plant in California’s Mojave Desert, is 550 megawatts. Twenty-five of these huge projects are due to come online by 2019, supported by 40.5 billion rupees ($649 million) in central-government funding—a paltry sum given that Desert Sunlight cost more than $1.5 billion to build. (In 2012, when Modi was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, he presided over the launch of the world’s largest solar installation: a group of plants totaling nearly one gigawatt combined.) Another 75 gigawatts of wind capacity is also planned.

Together, these additions would boost India’s renewable capacity from around 10 percent of the total to as much as 32 percent. At the same time, the government plans a program of building nuclear plants that would roughly triple capacity by 2024 and supply one-quarter of the country’s electricity needs by 2050. India also aims to further capitalize on its abundant potential for water power, particularly in the far northeastern states, where rivers tumble off the Himalayan plateau.

The fourth leg of India’s low-carbon energy platform will be natural gas—if the country can find enough to import. India’s domestic natural-gas reserves are small, and imports have been limited by the expense of shipping liquefied natural gas by tanker. But the conclusion of an international agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear arms capacity, which would lift the international sanctions that have restricted Iranian energy exports, would give new momentum to the planned construction of an ultra-deepwater natural-gas pipeline across the Arabian Sea, from Iran to India’s west coast.

Foreign companies are lining up to invest in India’s renewable–energy sector (Softbank, of Japan, recently announced it will invest $20 billion in solar projects in India). But actually building all these new projects will be extremely expensive, requiring a level of fiscal discipline and political will that India’s fractious, corrupt government has seldom achieved. Modi, who has surrounded himself with a group of capable, mostly well-respected technocrats like Goyal, has limited power to compel the states to implement and enforce clean-energy mandates, beyond the promise of central-government largesse. Rules requiring utilities to use a minimum amount of renewable power have mostly been ignored. Key pieces of legislation, including important amendments to the Electricity Act of 2003, are stalled in parliament because few of the country’s politicians are willing to tackle the key issue: utilities are currently forced to sell electricity at below costs. Efforts to modernize the country’s antiquated utilities—as must happen if there is to be any chance of implementing Modi’s ambitious energy agenda—seem no closer to success than they did when he took office.

And then there is the question of how to pay for all the new renewable-energy installations. One hundred gigawatts of new solar capacity will cost in the trillions of rupees, requiring both higher electricity rates and massive funding from the central government. A 200-rupee tax on every ton of coal produced goes into a National Clean Energy Fund that now totals around $2.6 billion, but little of that has actually gone to developers and builders. At the same time, finance minister Arun Jaitley, at Modi’s direction, is determined to reduce India’s budget deficit, currently around 4 percent of GDP. To overcome the likely shortfall, Modi and Goyal are, essentially, demanding that Western nations step in and finance renewable-energy programs in India and other developing countries. “The West will have to pay for the damage they have caused to the world and the planet,” Goyal said in a climate-change address in London in May.

Another barrier to Modi’s plans is that India imports nearly all its solar components. The “Make in India” campaign that he launched to encourage domestic manufacturing includes provisions to develop a solar manufacturing sector, but it will be tough to compete with low-priced imports from China in a country with a creaky industrial infrastructure, expensive capital, and little expertise in the technology.

In short, Modi is trying to create a world-class renewable-energy industry while reforming a corrupt and bankrupt utility sector, growing the country’s manufacturing sector, keeping deficits low, and sustaining economic growth at around 8 percent a year. If all that happens—if the grandiose solar plants get built, and new dams arise in the north, and the nuclear plants get financed, and the deepwater pipeline gets laid—India could, perhaps, solve the conundrum of “bloody coal” and overhaul its power generation system. That, however, would still leave one large problem: transmitting and distributing all the electricity to consumers.

The last mile

Kishan Lal met an ignominious end. On the evening of June 24, the 40-year-old fruit and vegetable vendor went to relieve himself in a public toilet in Shakarpur, a district of east Delhi, and made the mistake of touching a metal rail inside the loo. He was electrocuted and died instantly. India’s power grid is dangerous because it’s haphazard and often improvised. Power theft, known as katiyabaaz , is rampant; even legal connections are often jury-rigged. Snarls of lines enveloping the tops of leaning electrical poles are a ubiquitous sight in every Indian city.

Power losses in transmission and distribution across India average around 25 percent, and in some areas they can reach 50 percent. That means that half of the electricity being generated either never reaches an end user or is used but never paid for. Power losses in the developed world seldom reach 10 percent. For a grid about to be tested by the addition of large amounts of power from intermittent renewable sources, that outdated infrastructure is a huge problem.

It’s compounded by the fact that so many of India’s citizens aren’t on the grid at all (no count is precise, but the number is probably somewhere between 300 million and 400 million). Not only do power lines fail to reach many rural areas, but many of those living in city slums are also without utility services (often they simply cannot afford the estimated $105 it takes to connect to the grid, even if such connections are available). The Power Grid Corporation of India operates more than 70,000 miles of transmission lines that stretch across most of the subcontinent. What had been five regional grids have been united into a single national system that reaches to within a few miles of most of the population, a process completed in 2013. The grid’s transmission connections between regions remain inadequate, however—this was the primary cause of the 2012 blackout—and India’s switching and control technology has been little upgraded in the last two decades.

What’s more, the buildup of generation capacity in the last decade has not been matched by investments in power lines and substations. India’s grid operator plans to spend one trillion rupees ($15 billion) over the next few years to add nine new high-capacity transmission corridors—a sizable fraction of the $50 billion that Goyal has said will go to modernize the grid over the next decade.

In theory, such funding should make work easier for people like Pawan Kumar Gupta, the general manager of the State Load Despatch Centre, the main grid operations center for the nation’s capital. Outside the Despatch Centre, I saw the same tangled, sagging wires that lead to just about every building in Delhi; inside, the corridors were empty and dusty until we passed through a series of secure doors to reach the control room. There, a wall-size screen monitors the various feeders and substations for the five distribution utilities that serve the metropolis. On the board, green and yellow flashing numbers showed the amount of electricity flowing across the system. The function of the Despatch Centre is to match supply and load, or demand.

Demand goes up and down, but the supply is fixed. Nationwide, the country runs an annual energy deficit of 5 percent; in other words, it produces only 95 percent of the power it needs. In many big cities the deficit creeps upward to 20 or 25 percent. When the power’s not available, the Despatch Centre throttles down; the result is the daily rolling brownouts that plague Delhi, along with most other Indian cities. With grid power uncertain, major Indian companies such as IT giant Infosys have installed their own power plants: Infosys is planning a 50-megawatt solar park to serve its offices in Bangalore, Mysore, and Mangalore.

Under so-called renewable-purchase obligations, instituted under Modi’s predecessor, distribution utilities, which deliver power to end users and are known in India as “discoms,” are required to provide certain levels of electricity from renewable sources (7.3 percent of their total supply in 2014–2015; the level goes up each year). Their actual progress toward meeting those targets has been limited, though, and the penalties for not doing so are negligible.

If the utilities do manage to use more renewable energy, they will require major upgrades to the local distribution grids, to balance loads and ensure that the power supply is stable even when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing. Will the money come in time, if it comes at all? When I asked Gupta, he laughed out loud and threw up his hands. “It will be a very challenging job, no doubt,” he said, smiling.

The practical job of dispensing power was made more difficult by the victory in February’s municipal election of the Aam Aadmi Party, which ran on a platform of steep discounts for water and power. Promising free water and electricity, without specifying a way to pay for it, is an old tradition in Indian state and local election campaigns. Under the Aam Aadmi Party’s platform, Delhi families will get 20,000 liters of free water a month, and those who use less than 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month will get a 50 percent discount on their electric bills. Those subsidies will cost the government up to 16.7 billion rupees ($250 million) annually—and they will not help the discoms run profitable businesses.

The Delhi discoms, though, are models of financial stability compared with many of their counterparts across India, especially those that serve rural areas. Under the agricultural subsidies that have become the third rail of energy politics in India, farmers essentially get free power, which means the utilities that serve them lose money on every customer. Some of the loss is made up in handouts from the central government—but upgrading the grid will be of little use unless utilities can develop viable business models. The sector has been bailed out, to the tune of billions of rupees, twice in the last 13 years. The cumulative losses have increased so drastically that they could “pull down the whole growth agenda” of the Modi government, says Praveer Sinha, the CEO of Tata Power Delhi Distribution, one of the major Delhi discoms.

The landmark Electricity Act of 2003 instituted certain broad reforms, introduced elements of privatization, and created more consistent national rules governing the generation and transmission of power, but its provisions have been implemented spottily in some states and not at all in others. In May 2015, Goyal announced the National Smart Grid Mission, which will provide grants covering up to 30 percent for upgrades to regional and local grids. Two months later he unveiled a 20-year plan to upgrade the national transmission network, including an exemption from interstate transmission charges for power from renewable sources. Discoms in many states have announced rate hikes ranging from 5 percent to 45 percent.

Full reform, however, will require steps that remain politically off limits for now: complete privatization, less interference by state governments in utility operations, and, above all, an end to free electricity for farmers.

In the cities, meanwhile, discoms intent on modernizing—and getting customers to actually pay for their power rather than steal it—have been forced to broaden their scope. Tata Power Delhi, a subsidiary of the giant Tata conglomerate, has instituted a series of social programs, including free life insurance, medical care, and literacy and vocational classes, in order to try to persuade people to stop stealing power and pay for metered electricity.

At one literacy program funded by the company, in a slum in Pitam Pura, in northwest Delhi, a dozen or so women crowded into a small room in a concrete building on a Tuesday last summer. An ancient desktop computer occupied a small table in a corner. Outside, the usual nest of electrical wires led to a meter on the wall of the building. Kusum, who gave only her first name, said that she and her family started paying for electricity a year ago, along with most of her neighbors.

The earlier system of katiyabaaz “was just the common practice,” she said through an interpreter. “We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong—it was just the way of life.”

Her husband is a day laborer who works when he can find employment. The monthly family income of Kusum, her husband, their three sons, and one granddaughter, who all occupy a single room of about 150 square feet, is about 10,000 rupees ($150). Out of that, the family now pays around 510 rupees a month for electricity. That makes life more difficult. “But I don’t live in fear of accidents anymore,” she adds. “We feel more at peace, and safer, and we have more pride to know that we’re not stealing.”

Bringing new customers like Kusum onto the grid, legally, is a step toward rationalizing the utility business. But such stories are always dwarfed by India’s vastness. Kusum’s is a relatively small slum of perhaps 21,000 people. That’s a tiny fraction of the population of India’s second-largest city, and not every utility has the wherewithal to become a social-services agency in addition to providing electricity.

In any case, reducing power theft among the urban poor will solve only one of many problems for India’s grid. In many places, villagers who can see the poles and power lines from their homes could wait decades for those lines to reach them. Expanding the grid to reach every home and business would require many trillions of rupees that the central and state governments simply don’t have. For many, gaining access to electricity through solar microgrids and other local power sources that bypass the traditional utility model is a far more practical option.

“I don’t agree to the one-size-fits-all mechanism,” Goyal told the national Business Standard newspaper in June, adding that individual state-by-state plans for power-sector reform would be issued by mid-2016. The wider implication is that India’s energy problems will require solutions tailored to the country’s history, its technology and economy, and its place in the world.

The solar bubble

Although Appapur is located inside a tiger reserve, the real problems are leopards, snakes, and wild boars. Leopards take 10 to 15 domestic cows and goats a year, local people told me when I visited in late July. Boars destroy the small food gardens the villagers cultivate. Venomous snakes coil in the grass, a hazard for those walking in the dark. Solar lighting in the evening, made possible with 100-watt panels and lead-acid batteries, has reduced these problems but not eliminated them; the leopards sometimes hunt by day as well as night, and the boars are brazen at all times. A solar-powered electric fence would take care of the animal threats, people told me, but they realize that is years away at best.

The most dramatic changes the small solar systems have wrought in the community are in education and social life. Children have light to read and study at night. A few TVs provide a link to the outside world (there was no Internet service, and no computers, in Appapur when I visited). The outdoor lights, though there aren’t many, bring people together to relax, socialize, and discuss the village’s problems in ways that were impossible in smoky, cramped, kerosene-lit huts.

“We can communicate more with our neighbors,” says T. Jaya Lakshmi, the granddaughter of village chief Mallaiah Tokala and the director of Appapur’s one-room school. “We have more of a sense of community because we’re not afraid to go out at night.”

The most urgent need now is water. Before the solar panels were installed, a crew came and dug a well near the huge banyan tree that marks the center of the village. Later a couple of panels were hooked up to run the pump, but they proved insufficient. Officials promised to return with more panels. That was more than a year ago. Today people must still walk two kilometers to fetch water.

India has thousands of unelectrified villages where the people still live in darkness. Most will never be connected to the grid. Rooftop solar power—or, alternatively, microgrids powered by various combinations of small renewable installations and diesel generators—are the only way their inhabitants will ever get reliable electricity. A number of Indian and foreign providers, including fast-growing companies like Visionary Lighting and Energy and Greenlight Planet, are spreading small home solar systems across South Asia, driven by government incentives, plummeting costs for the technology, and high demand.

But small-scale solar is a tough, low-margin business. The money, at least for now, is in large, government-supported solar parks. The rush to build solar projects in India has officially begun. This year analysts expect the country to add 2.5 gigawatts of solar capacity , more than double the total added in 2014. In phase one of the National Solar Mission , the government is soliciting bids to build 15 gigawatts of capacity across the country.

The results of the government’s first solar auctions have been striking. In one, held in Madhya Pradesh, Canadian developer SkyPower won the bidding with an offer of 5.05 rupees (about 7 U.S. cents) per kilowatt-hour . That auction, offering the chance to build 300 megawatts of solar capacity, was so oversold that it attracted bids totaling 2,200 megawatts, at rates well below the 7.04 rupees per kilowatt-hour that the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission has determined is the threshold of viability for solar photovoltaic projects.

In other words, solar builders in India are bidding unrealistically low prices for these projects, counting on the Indian government to make up the difference. Indeed, the government has initiated a scheme for public-private infrastructure projects, which will provide grants to solar developers “to support infrastructure projects that are economically justified but fall short of financial viability.”

Whether or not that funding will be enough to make these projects viable or profitable over the long term, the solar balloon in India continues to rise. When I met SkyPower CEO Kerry Adler, he vehemently defended the Toronto-based company’s India strategy and the prices at which it plans to build solar parks. “There are some suicidal bidders out there,” Adler acknowledged, but “SkyPower has never secured a contract it has failed to build. We’ve never lost money on one of these projects, and we don’t intend to start now.”

Be that as it may, some of India’s currently planned utility-scale solar projects will never get built, while others will get built and fail. And even the successful ones will not be sufficient to solve all of India’s energy challenges. Jairam Ramesh, the former environment minister, suggests that the country needs to think differently about renewable energy sources and not expect them to primarily serve “this vertically integrated model of electricity generation, where the bigger the [project the] better.” In some cases, smaller will be better.

Brick factories

That transformation is already happening. In southern Indian cities like Bangalore, many rooftops already have water tanks heated with solar energy, and the number of states that require rooftop solar on new construction is multiplying. Every town in India, even the dustiest roadside hamlet, has banners and billboards advertising small battery and inverter systems. A new energy ecosystem is arising in complex and not always predictable ways.

One day last summer, I visited a solar test site in a walled compound near the town of Challakere, in the dry scrubland a few hundred kilometers north of Bangalore. Run by the Bangalore–based Indian Institute of Science (known as IISc), it’s a concentrated-solar-power test array. Rows of shallow parabolic troughs, made of specially coated aluminum, stretch the length of more than two and a half football fields. Sunlight reflected from the troughs is concentrated onto water pipes above. Started up this fall, the system heats water in the pipes to 200 °C; the hot water goes to a heat exchanger attached to a small turbine that produces 100 kilowatts of electricity.

Funded by the Karnataka state government and the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States , this array will be used to test various reflective materials and heat-transfer fluids (including, for instance, molten salt in addition to water). The objective, says IISc professor of materials engineering Praveen Ramamurthy, is to find the best combinations of components specific to conditions in India, a process that is badly needed for solar photovoltaic technology as well.

“Nobody is testing for the aging [of solar equipment] in India,” says Ramamurthy. “We get solar panels, but they’re certified for moderate climates in the U.S. and Europe, and we just adapt.”

Among the hazards to solar arrays in India are high temperatures and humidity, which tend to rot the adhesives that hold together conventional solar panels. Dust and degradation are also major problems. Ramamurthy is developing polymer composites to seal in and protect the photovoltaic cells. Solar photovoltaics will be the main source of solar power generation in India, but concentrated solar power is also of keen interest, because it can be used in ways other than generating electricity. Across India, for example, are small, independent factories that produce bricks by baking them in wood-fired stoves. That causes deforestation and heavy emissions of carbon dioxide. Using concentrated solar to bake the bricks would be a huge boon to the environment.

Such tailored solutions may seem inadequate to the scale of the challenges. The combination of failing utilities, heavy reliance on coal, a faulty grid, and an energy sector crippled by government subsidies and interference seems to argue that India has no chance: no path to economic growth and energy abundance except one that’s disastrous for the environment. But at ground level, the picture is more complicated and less bleak.

“The central government and outside investors are, naturally, focused on these big mega-projects, where they’re getting ridiculous financing, but the real innovation is happening at the village level,” says Anshu Bharadwaj, the executive director of the Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy, a Delhi think tank. “The most impactful way is to develop a large number of 100-kilowatt, half-a-megawatt projects that are distributed across the country, close to rural loads.”

Ultimately, some combination of distributed solar power, local microgrids, and large renewable-power plants will be needed to address India’s energy needs over the next 50 years. You can’t extend the grid to every village and hut in India, but you also can’t develop and operate a 21st-century manufacturing base using unpredictable distributed solar power. The key will be figuring out what works on a state-by-state, city-by-city, village-by-village level. That work is already being carried out in the state of Bihar, by a team of researchers connected to the Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT. Bihar is typical of India’s rural states: it has more than 100 million people, less than one-fifth of whom have access to reliable electricity. The state discom is more or less bankrupt, subsidized electricity bills are artificially low, and electricity losses on the grid are close to 50 percent. The reach of the grid is random, says Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga, a visiting professor at MIT and head of the Reference Electrification Model , which is focused on planning electricity access for India and other developing countries.

“I visited a village today that doesn’t have electricity,” he told me in July, “and 100 meters away, the next village has good electricity. It’s confusing. They may get it next month, next decade, or never.”

Paradoxically, the sheer size of the task ahead—the fact that India is in the early stages of upgrading and modernizing its energy system—is in some ways an advantage. It happens to be embarking on its modernization phase at a time when prices for renewable-energy generation, and for the technology to make it work at the local level, are starting to rival prices for traditional fossil-fuel-generated power.

BMW, for example, said earlier this year that it will build a solar plant to meet 20 percent of the power demand at its factory near Chennai. Indian Railways, which operates the most extensive railroad system in the world and is the nation’s largest employer, plans to build a gigawatt of solar capacity in the next five years. By avoiding the cost of providing universal, grid-based electricity, India can concentrate on what works best for specific locations and specific needs. Every microgrid and local solar system deployed reduces by a fraction the need to extend the grid; every new renewable-energy system installed by a business or factory reduces the pressure to build ultra-mega power plants.

Because it’s industrializing now, India has the chance to remake itself using rapidly improving technologies. Today, it’s requiring new buildings to be solar-equipped and deploying entrepreneurial distribution models that bypass the broken utilities. Tomorrow, it could be relying on concentrated solar for small factories, or small nuclear reactors, or some other generation and distribution model that has yet to emerge.

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Energy crisis: Causes and Global Impact

Last updated on January 10, 2024 by ClearIAS Team

The global energy crisis is a result of a cascade of issues faced by different countries over the years. The chain of events begins with the pandemic, along with a fall in wholesale energy prices. As Covid-19 impacted the world, gas, and electricity use reduced sharply across countries, in contrast to overproduction from oil and gas companies.

The US, China, the UK, India, Europe, and South Korea were the countries worst hit by the energy crunch.

Also read: Methane Emissions

Table of Contents

What has led to the world energy crisis?

In recent times various news of energy crisis has come up in both developed and developing nations-

• Coal and power crisis in China
• Coal crisis in India
• Fuel crisis in the UK

The reasons for this power crunch are being stated by experts- Pandemic, Greenflation, geopolitics, and so on.

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The COVID-19 pandemic reduced the global demand for oil and other energy sources, which in turn limited their production as well. However, the unexpected recovery rate from the pandemic by the world has led to a rapid increase in energy demands- causing sudden inflation .

The sudden demand-based inflation has caused coal and crude oil prices to double this year. As companies and countries are racing to meet the hiked demand, the global scenario has been affected negatively by the supply-side crunch and high prices.

Climate change:

The heavy rainfall seen in South and Southeast Asia has made coal mining difficult in countries like India and China; hence these countries are facing the coal crisis now.

In Europe, the colder winter has heightened the energy crisis. The harsh winter conditions adversely affect the gas transport systems in these regions as most of the gas in Europe is imported.

Greenflation:

The world is trying to move towards more sustainable sources of energy, hence driving the demand for still limited energy sources like natural gas has increased causing massive price rises- causing greenflation . Also, many countries have closed their coal fields due to environmental concerns piling on to the energy woes. The governments have also placed various restrictions on traditional energy sources which also add to the greenflation.

Renewable sources like wind and solar power require massive infrastructure and investments which is delaying the output as well. This makes them unreliable for meeting the net energy demand for a long time. Another downside is that renewable energy lacks a storage solution unlike coal and natural gas; hence it is not yet ready to be fully depended upon.

Geopolitics:

Geopolitics is also a contributing factor in elevated crises in some regions. For instance, when EU nations suffer from an energy crunch, Russia steps in to help, but this time Russia has not increased the supplies, which may be a tactic to put pressure to expedite the Nord Stream 2 pipeline approval.

Energy crisis in India

India depends on fossil fuels for almost 70% of its power requirements, but currently, the country’s coal stocks are running abysmally low. The major reasons for this energy crisis are-

• The power consumption in many states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Karnataka has risen from 14% to 21% after the pandemic, putting strain on the production and supply network.
• The power crisis in China has hiked the demand and prices of fuel globally.
• India imports most of its coal from outside, and the supply chain bottlenecks are still not smoothened post-pandemic.
• The widening gap between the low cost of electricity and the high prices of imported coal.
• Even after having the 4 th largest coal reserves in the world, the local supplies have strained due to a drop in investments in fossil fuels to meet climate targets.
• Power companies did not stockpile coal due to the high costs of stockpiling.

The government is taking measures on a war footing scale to tackle the crisis by working with state-run organizations to boost the mining and production of coal. According to experts, the winters may help see a drop in the energy demand, stabilizing the situation a bit.

Way forward

The world is in an energy transition stage when there is bound to be an imbalance in demand and supply throughout. Since most of the consumptive and fast-growing world economies are heavily dependent on thermal energy , it will be a rather difficult task to switch to renewable sources of energy quickly. Thus, it is also imperative that we divide our attention towards sustainable alternatives also to achieve better stability in the future and avoid future energy crises.

Necessity is the mother of invention- on these lines, many countries are trying to set the right balance between green energy and fossil fuel usage.

California has installed solar-powered batteries connected to the grid. These batteries help power the grid during the heatwave and store excess energy during peak solar hours. This stored energy is dispatched back into the grid after sunset.

The offshore wind energy farm of Denmark was a global first in 1991 but now has been taken up by many countries including India. Now, Denmark is building another global first- an energy island in the North Sea that could eventually be capable of supplying energy to approximately 10 million homes. The move will create a critical boost to the world’s offshore wind capacity. The first ‘hub and spoke’ energy scheme will involve building an island 80 kilometers off the Danish coastline to act as the transmission center for hundreds of wind turbines surrounding it.

The Green Grids Initiative , the one sun one world one grid concept introduced by India is also the right step in harnessing and saving energy for the future.

It is imperative in today’s scenario that climate change mitigation and tackling the energy crisis have to go hand in hand as both are complexly interlinked. The countries need to come up with solutions to control, mitigate and balance the future with the present.

Read:  Sedimentary Basins of India

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Power crisis in India: These states facing electricity problems; full list

The total electricity shortage in the country has hit 623 million units, surpassing march figures, according to a report. here's a list of states facing power crisis..

• Updated May 02, 2022, 6:43 PM IST

Amid the rampant rise in power demand due to the prevailing heatwave and the worst electricity shortage in more than six years due to lack of adequate coal supply to thermal plants, several states in the country are now experiencing power outages for multiple hours. 

Electricity supply fell behind demand by 1.88 billion units, or 1.6%, during the first 27 days of April, according to Reuters. The total electricity shortage in the country has hit 623 million units, surpassing the total shortage in March.

According to a LocalCircles survey,  2 out of 3 households in the country have admitted to facing power outages.  While 1 in 3 households are facing outages of over 2 hours or more each day. 

The Railway Ministry had cancelled hundreds of trips to ensure priority routes for coal wagons and faster turnaround. While Coal India Limited (CIL) has ramped up coal production by 27.2 per cent during April. 

Here are the states facing power outages: 

The maximum temperature in Delhi has been hovering between 42 to 46 degree celsius over the past week. With the mercury shooting up in Delhi, the power demand crossed 6,000 MW mark in April, discom officials said. 

The Delhi government has warned of supply disruptions citing shortage of coal stocks at various power plants. However, the power ministry maintained that a total capacity of 6,892 MW was available for Delhi and there was no shortage of supply to the capital. 

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had said on April 26 that the problem of power cuts in the state will be resolved soon and assured that his government is taking measures to ease the situation.

"Uninterrupted electricity will be provided to citizens of the state. For this, permanent measures are being taken by the power discoms. The problem of power cuts in the state will be resolved soon," he said, according to an official statement.

Amid rising temperatures, the Haryana government has changed the timings of government and private schools from May 4. The schools will start from 7 am and will run till 12 noon. 

Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh has a 3,000 MW deficit. Against the demand of around 23,000 MW, the supply is just 20,000 MW, resulting in load shedding in rural areas and smaller towns.

According to the data made available by the state power department, at present, electricity is being supplied in rural areas on an average of 15 hours 7 minutes against the scheduled 18 hours. Similarly, electricity is being supplied on an average of 19 hours 3 minutes against the scheduled 21 hours 30 minutes in towns and 19 hours 50 minutes against 21 hours 30 minutes in tehsil headquarters.

Uttarakhand 

Uttarakhand is no exception with long power cuts. UPCL (Uttarakhand Power Corporation Ltd) MD Anil Kumar attributed the acute power shortage to a rise in demand caused by the early onset of summer and to the closure of a gas-driven power plant in Kashipur in Udham Singh Nagar district.

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh is facing a shortfall of about 50 million units of power as against the demand, which is touching 210 million units a day.

According to the state Energy Secretary B Sridhar, the current crisis, which was a nation-wide phenomenon, might ease by the end of April.

Bihar too is witnessing frequent power cuts in rural as well as urban areas.

"Bihar is facing a power deficit of 200-300 Mega Watts (MW) per day because of the sudden increase in demand. The state's consumption is around 6,000 MW per day and the availability of power from different sources is 5,000 to 5,200 MW only. However, almost every day we are purchasing around 600 MW from the power exchange at higher rates for our consumers in the state," Sanjeev Hans, Secretary of Energy Department (Bihar), said.

Paddy sowing season is yet to start in Punjab but electricity consumers are already facing unscheduled load shedding at many places in the state. Several areas, including Ludhiana, Patiala and Mohali are facing frequent power cuts. The maximum demand for power has already reached around 8,000 MW in the state.

In Punjab's Hoshiarpur, farmers blocked vehicular traffic in protest against irregular electricity supply.

In Rajasthan, the electricity demand has increased 31 per cent, leading to power cuts of 5 to 7 hours a day. Rural areas are facing more power cuts than in urban areas.

Last Friday, Kerala Electricity Minister K Krishnankutty rejected reports of the state facing any major power crunch, saying there was some shortage in the availability of electricity but that would be resolved soon.

His reaction came a day after a 15-minute long load-shedding was imposed in the state by the Kerala State Electricity Board Limited (KSEBL) following a shortage in the availability of power from the central pool.

Jharkhand has also been facing power outages over the past few days. 

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren has admitted that the state has not been able to meet the peak demand and additional funds have been made available to procure electricity from the market.

Also read:  Power consumption rises 13.6% to 132.98 billion units in April: Govt

• #Power cuts
• #states facing power cuts
• #power crisis in india
• #list of states facing power cuts
• #coal shortage in india
• #india worst power situation

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Tackling India’s Energy Crisis

• 01 Apr 2023
• 10 min read
• Mobilization of Resources
• Infrastructure
• Growth & Development
• Mineral & Energy Resources
• Conservation of Resources
• GS Paper - 3

This editorial is based on “Energy imports must be slashed” which was published in the Hindu Business Line on 30/03/2023. It discusses the issue of the Energy Crisis and ways to address the same.

For Prelims: Energy Imports, Coal, Coke, Crude Oil, LNG, LPG, Greenhouse Gases, Photovoltaic Cells, Lithium Ion Batteries, Covid-19 Pandemic, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, Floods, Droughts

For Mains: Mobilization of Resources, Infrastructure, Growth & Development

India's energy imports are projected to surge by 43.6% in FY2023 , which would significantly impact the country's import bill. Energy imports, including coal, coke, crude oil , LNG, and LPG, account for a significant portion of India's merchandise import bill, representing 36.6%.

If the current import growth rate persists, the energy import bill will soon surpass that of all remaining merchandise imports, with projections indicating that it could exceed USD 1 trillion by December 2026 , a troubling prospect. Additionally, the import value of items required for clean energy such as photovoltaic cells and Lithium Ion batteries would further exacerbate the situation.

However, India can cut its crippling import bill by boosting exploration of local oilfields and enhancing coal output.

What are the Reasons behind an Increase in the Price of Energy Sources?

• The Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions (US sanctions on Russia post the Russian invasion of Ukraine ) have led to disruptions in the global oil supply chain , which has increased demand for alternative energy sources.
• However, the US is now pursuing energy independence and is reducing its reliance on Saudi oil.
• High inflation in developed countries can certainly lead to a surge in the price of oil, coal, and other energy sources.
• This can induce price increase of the oil all over the world including India and affects its buying power.
• China is also a significant consumer of energy , particularly fossil fuels like coal and oil.

What are the Challenges in Tackling India's Energy Crisis?

• The estimated values of petroleum imports for FY 2023 are USD 210 billion . This includes crude oil with an import value of USD 163 billion and LNG and LPG of USD17.6 billion and USD 14 billion, respectively. Crude imports grew by 53% over the last fiscal.
• The country's coal reserves are of low quality and there are significant environmental concerns associated with their extraction and use.
• As a result, India is looking for alternative sources of energy, such as solar, wind , and hydro power.
• A rapid addition of solar farms has helped India avert daytime supply gaps , but a shortage of coal-fired and hydropower capacity risks exposing millions to widespread outages at night.
• India's power availability in "non-solar hours" in April, 2023 is expected to be 1.7% lower than peak demand.
• The poor energy infrastructure is also affecting the development of the country's rural areas, where many people do not have access to electricity.
• India's energy sector requires significant investment to improve its infrastructure and expand its energy capacity.
• However, the government and private sector are not investing enough in the energy sector.
• India's low per capita income and high poverty rates also make it difficult for people to afford clean energy sources.
• India's energy sector is heavily regulated, and there are significant political barriers to energy sector reforms.
• India has been slow to adopt renewable energy policies, and there is a lack of coordination among various government agencies and ministries.
• India is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world , and its energy sector is a major contributor to these emissions.
• Climate change is also affecting the country's energy infrastructure, as extreme weather events such as floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and severe.

What Should be the Way Forward?

• Category I (7 Basins): Established commercial production
• Category II (3 Basins): Known accumulation of hydrocarbons but no commercial production as yet.
• Category III (6 Basins): Indicated hydrocarbon reserves considered geologically oil-bearing
• Category IV (10 basins): Uncertain potential may be prospective by analogy with similar basins worldwide; and deep-water reserves.
• India should focus on improving the quality of domestic coal to reduce the reliance on imports. This can be achieved by investing in technology to increase the calorific value of coal and reduce the ash content.
• India has vast potential for renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydro.
• The government should encourage the development of renewable energy projects through incentives and subsidies.
• Carbon pricing can help to incentivize the use of renewable energy by putting a price on carbon emissions.
• India must invest in developing its energy infrastructure to ensure efficient transmission and distribution of energy.
• This can be achieved by upgrading the existing infrastructure and building new power plants, pipelines, and transmission lines.
• India must also focus on reducing coal imports. There’s not enough scope for reducing the import of coking coal as India does not have high-quality reserves but the import of thermal coal can be managed.
• The need to import arises because of the low quality (high ash content of 30-40%) of Indian coal, the inability of Coal India Ltd. to increase production and use technology to increase the calorific value of coal, and within-country transport restrictions.

UPSC Civil Services Examination, Previous Year Question (PYQ)

Q. The term ‘West Texas Intermediate’, sometimes found in news, refers to a grade of (2020)

(a) Crude oil (b) Bullion (c) Rare earth elements (d) Uranium

• West Texas intermediate (WTI), also known as Texas light sweet, is a grade of crude oil used as a benchmark in oil pricing.
• WTI is described as light crude oil because of its relatively low density, and sweet because of its low sulfur content.
• It is sourced from US oil fields, primarily in Texas, Louisiana, and North Dakota.
• Therefore, option (a) is correct.

Q. Petroleum refineries are not necessarily located nearer to crude oil producing areas, particularly in many of the developing countries. Explain its implications. (2017)

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Power Crisis in India – Cause and response

From Current Affairs Notes for UPSC » Editorials & In-depths » This topic

Context: Instances of power outages have been reported in several states. Temperatures have shot up across many parts of the country with the early onset of summer, leading to a rise in the demand for power.

This topic of “Power Crisis in India – Cause and response” is important from the perspective of the UPSC IAS Examination , which falls under General Studies Portion.

Why is there concern around power supply?

• The demand for power has soared.
• Several states, including Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Telangana, and Maharashtra, are facing power outages.
• The coal stock with power generation companies (gencos) is not adequate to meet the rising demand.

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How bad is the coal shortage?

• Normally, a power plant must maintain 26 days of coal stock. However, at present, several power plants are reporting critical levels of coal stock.
• Data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) shows that 97 power plants out of the 173 that the CEA tracks have critical levels of coal inventory.
• Of the 173, there are 155 non-pithead plants or power plants that are not near coal mines.
• These have an average of 28% of the stock compared to the normal scenario.
• The 18 plants that are near coal mines have an average stock of 81% of the normal requirement.

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Is coal shortage the only reason for a power crisis?

• The lack of railway rakes to transport coal is also a major problem.
• The state power distribution companies ( discoms ) have also not been able to clear their dues to power generation companies.
• The covid-19 pandemic has now weakened the finances of many states, raising doubts about the ability of state-owned discoms to clear their dues.

What has led to the coal shortage?

• Several factors have led to the shortage, including the stagnation of production by Coal India Ltd (CIL) after the bumper production in FY15 and FY16. In FY22, however, the production rose 4.4% to 622.6 million tonnes.
• High dues of discoms towards gencos and the eventual delay in gencos paying CIL have complicated the scenario.
• Delays caused in the environment and land acquisition clearances due to the existing political tussle between the Centre and coal-rich states in one way or other led to the shortage.

How has the Centre responded?

• Coal India Ltd (CIL) has made efforts to raise supply to the power sector by reducing its dispatch to other industries.
• The power ministry is planning to provide a ‘tolling’ facility to avoid long-distance transport.
• In this system, state gencos can allow other thermal power plants near a coal mine to utilize their coal linkages to generate and transmit power back.
• This is an easier alternative compared to transportation.

Way forward

• The states further need to ensure that imported coal-based plants operate at reasonable tariffs.

Practice Question for Mains

• Discuss the looming power crisis in India. (250 Words, 15 Marks)

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Explained: Why India Is Facing An Energy Crisis Right Now

The energy crisis in Europe and particularly in the UK - after the shortage of truck drivers, who ferry fuel to pumps, due to Brexit and COVID-19 induced pandemic - is now spilling over to the rest of the world. 

The latest country facing the energy crunch is India with authorities warning that the country’s power plants are running hazardously low on coal in the wake of a sharp surge in energy demands soon after the economy recovers from pandemic blows.

According to the Union Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh, India had an average of four days’ worth of coal left at the end of September - the lowest in years, down from 13 days at the beginning of August.

Since coal meets around 70% of energy demands of India with a 57% share of its energy mix, the Power Minister, in a latest interview, has warned that the bridging of the fuel gap is still likely to be a “touch and go” affair and that the nation could be handling a supply squeeze for as long as six months.

How did we get here?  

India's growing energy crisis has some similarities to China's shortages, where rising demand from factories faced supply constraints due to high coal prices. In India, too, a sharp uptick in power demand post-pandemic coupled with power plants not anticipating the surge and hence leading to supply issues have resulted in the current coal shortage. 

Further, an international increase in coal prices have India's power generators having cut back on importing coal in recent months along with the monsoon rains which alike every year flooded the mines and key transport routes ultimately affecting the domestic production of coal. 

India's reliance on coal

Despite India being on track to exceed its target of delivering 450GW of renewable energy by the end of the decade, it still continues to expand its coal capacity. India currently has 233 GW of coal plants in operation and a further 34.4 GW under construction. This is not it. Prime minister Narendra Modi has further plans to ramp up domestic coal production to one billion tonnes per year as part of his self-reliant India policy which is evidently seen as a serious threat to the lives and livelihoods of indigenous communities.

Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency had also warned that Modi’s coal expansion plans are “difficult to reconcile with India’s evolving energy needs and environmental priorities.”  

There are reasonable apprehensions that India is most likely to increase its domestic coal production over the next few months to make up for the shortfall. 

Clearly the current crisis, along with falling support from investors to finance new coal-fired plants, raise serious questions about the government’s plans to expand coal production and might not go well with coming Cop26 climate talks which are scheduled to happen next month where India is expected to submit an improved 2030 climate plan to the UN.

However, this reliance on coal is not seen as changing anytime soon. By 2040, coal is still expected to cover 42% of India’s new demand for energy.

What happens next?   

As of now there have not been any large-scale power outages in India yet, as per the data provided by grid regulator Power System Operation Corporation . However, small shortages have so far been mostly restricted to northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh.

With the energy supplies most likely to remain constrained for a while as it will take time for producers to boost their output in response to higher prices much depends on the government's response to the crisis. 

Apart from it, as India will move from summer to winter, demand for electricity from private households is also likely to fall in contrast to China, where extremely cold winters heat up the demand for electricity. Experts believe that the next six months will be particularly important for India's energy industry and the government will closely monitor developments in domestic production and prices.

For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.

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Energy Crisis in India Essay | Essay on Energy Crisis in India for Students and Children in English

February 18, 2021 by Prasanna

Energy Crisis in India Essay:  Energy is significant for all our development and improvement. There are various wellsprings of energy, for example, petroleum product, wind, water and the sun. Petroleum derivative has been the customary wellspring of our energy needs and under it come coal, lignite, oil and flammable gas. Another wellspring of customary energy is fuelwood, creature squander and agrarian buildups yet these are known as non-business energizes. Tragically, the wellsprings of traditional energy are exhausting rapidly.

These regular and common wellsprings of energy are not adequate to fulfil our steadily expanding need, and, accordingly, there is a crisis. As an agricultural nation, India needs more energy increases as it is the primary contributor to the financial and mechanical turn of events. Energy is devoured by all areas of economy and all segments of society in India. An energy crisis isn’t limited to India alone. Indeed, even the created nations like the U.S., Russia, Germany, and Japan, and so forth have this issue.

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Long and Short Essays on Energy Crisis in India for Students and Children in English

We are providing students with essay samples on a long essay on Energy Crisis in India of 500 words and a short essay on Energy Crisis in India of 150 words on the topic Energy Crisis in India for reference.

Long Essay on Energy Crisis in India Essay 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Energy Crisis in India is helpful to students of classes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.

The energy crisis and finding a reasonable answer for it establishes a significant contemporary discussion in India today. The energy crisis has a significant bearing on all financial improvement of a country. Its power Indo-U.S atomic arrangement trans-country pipelines and aggressive strategy of getting petrol fields in various pieces of the universes can be found considering the energy crisis.

India isn’t the independent case confronting the energy crisis. The world, in general, is confronting an energy crisis. Energy’s significant economies of the created world replicated with expanding requests from quickly agricultural nations, for example, India, China, and Brazil are liable for immense expansion.

The decline of oil creations in conventional oil delivering districts, such as Saudi Arabia alongside political dangers in nations like Iraq, Iran and Nigeria, has prompted a situation where request overwhelms the stockpile.

In India, there are several elements which prompted the Situation of an energy crisis. There has been a sharp ascent in India’s utilization of energy since the most recent decade of the twentieth-century The year 1991 released the powers of advancement, privatization area and going with ascend in energy flowing energy and so forth. These assets have neglected to fill the hole of interest and energy supply because of an assortment of reasons. Hydroelectricity is a modest wellspring of energy yet is resolute as far as area.

There are numerous social and natural concerns, such as dislodging of tribes, submergence of backwoods related to hydroelectricity. Other environmentally friendly power assets, such as sun-based force, geo-warm, flowing force are in an early stage of improvement and are industrially unviable—non-environmentally friendly power structures a significant piece of absolute energy assets of the country. Coal oil or gas terminated force Stations produce power. Oil subordinates are utilized in the transportation area. The issue with or environmentally friendly power is that India needs to import a significant segment of oil-based commodities as it isn’t customarily blessed with inadequate quantum. Taking off global costs of unrefined petroleum involves a substantial outpouring of foreign trade, and there is the ubiquity of energy uncertainty in case of an interruption in inventory.

Thermal power is being offered as a panacea for the energy crisis being looked at by India. Thermal power is area autonomous wellsprings of energy; for example, a chaotic reactor can be set in any region to supply power. Further atomic fuel is less expensive than oil. India has acquired an extensive aptitude in the turn of events and tackling of thermal power. India’s atomic program is three Stage program that includes the utilization of immense thorium saves in the district. Thermal power is equipped for overcoming any barrier between the interest and supply of energy in India. Of late, the thermal power program dealt with no accessibility of regular uranium for the fast development of thermal power in the country. Familiar uranium happens in minuscule amounts in India.

Short Essay on Energy Crisis in India 150 Words In English

Short Essay on Energy Crisis in India is helpful to students of classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

We are generally restless because we realize that daily may eventually come when we have no more coal or oil. It will mean an energy crisis. Man is keeping watch for different wellsprings of energy. Our current expectation appears to lay on the atomic force.

However, atomic force is brimming with chances. It is exceptionally touchy. Mishaps and disasters in atomic reactors are exceptionally risky.

The radio-dynamic waves from an atomic plant that has broken the radio–dynamic waves from an atomic plant separated are a great danger to man. Also, when an atomic plant down is an extraordinary danger to man. Additionally, when an atomic plant is dead following 50 years, it must be covered and protected until the end of time.

10 Lines on Energy Crisis in India Essay

• The world is hence confronted with the energy crisis.
• The state of India is no more excellent.
• The interest for energy in India will require multiple times of energy constantly 200.
• The Government of India is finding a way to supply energy for non-business proposes from various sources, for example, biogas and snappy – developing timberland ranch however the rustic poor can’t pay the significant expense of energy.
• The energy crisis and finding a reasonable answer for it establishes a significant contemporary discussion in India today.
• The energy crisis has a significant bearing on all financial improvement of a country. Its power Indo-US atomic arrangement trans-country pipelines and aggressive strategy of getting petrol fields in various pieces of the universes can be found considering the energy crisis.
• India isn’t the independent case confronting the energy crisis.
• The world, in general, is confronting an energy crisis.
• Energy’s significant economies of the created world replicated with expanding requests from quickly agricultural nations, for example, India, China, and Brazil are liable for immense expansion.
• Energy is significant for all our development and improvement.

FAQ’s on Energy Crisis in India Essay

Question 1. What is the Energy Crisis?

Answer: The energy crisis has a significant bearing on all financial improvement of a country. Its power Indo-US atomic arrangement trans-country pipelines and aggressive strategy of getting petrol fields in various pieces of the universes can be found considering the energy crisis.

Question 2. What are the nations facing an energy crisis?

Answer: Nations like India, China, Brazil are liable for immense expansion widespread that causes energy crisis.

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Energy Crisis in India Essay | Essay on Energy Crisis in India for Students and Children in English

Energy Crisis in India Essay: Energy is one of the important resources that we need to run industries. It is also required in our day-to-day life. For being an economically developing country, having sufficient energy is highly required. Many natural resources are used in producing electricity to supply it to households. Petroleum is the primary source of energy and the following are coal, lignite, and flammable oils. Due to increasing industrialization and expanding our needs, there’s been an energy crisis in India. In this essay, we will understand the reasons for the energy crisis and how we can avoid it.

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Long and Short Essays on Energy Crisis in India for Students and Kids in English

A long essay on Energy Crisis in India of 450-500 words has been provided it is useful for students in classes 7, 8, 9, and 10. For the reference of students in Classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, a short essay on Energy Crisis in India of 100-150 words has been provided.

Long Essay on Energy Crisis in India 500 Words in English

If we talk about the importance of energy in our life then we can say that energy is responsible for the improvement of many sectors like agriculture, industrial, medical, and many more. For a country to be developed, energy is very important. Without energy, the machines won’t work and there will be no growth and development in the country.

There are many sources of energy like fossil fuels, wind, sun, and water. There are some traditional sources of energy too like fuelwood, animal waste, and residues of agriculture. Fossil fuels are the primary source of energy and it includes coal, lignite, petrol and natural gas. Unfortunately, the level of fossil fuels is decreasing day by day because the consumption of energy has increased.

To meet the increasing demand for energy, companies and industries are working hard which ironically results in using more power than before. The demand for fossil fuels has increased in India which results in this energy crisis. As we know that India is a developing country which means the consumption of energy is increasing to operate industrial activities. The economy of the country is dependent on these activities.

The energy is consumed by each sector of the economy and each section of the society in India. Not only in India but developed countries like Russia, Japan, Germany, and many more face the same problem. As there is a rise in the population, the demand for energy instantly increases.

As the prices of oil in the international market are increasing rapidly, this puts India in an energy crisis. We are in the need of energy-efficient machines and technology especially in the case of vehicles because as they consume most of the energy produced by petroleum. The government should take the necessary steps to preserve the natural resources for the benefit of the future so that we won’t have to face the energy crisis in India again.

The form of energy which is in greatest demand is electricity. The requirement for electricity is so important that without electricity, it would be very difficult to live or perform functions. Though, there has been tremendous growth in power generation as most of the areas of India enjoy the electricity facilities provided by the government. Still, there are some areas where there is no electricity or there is a huge shortage of electricity.

All our agricultural sectors and industrial sectors are dependent on electricity and energy resources. So, if you want to save fossil fuels from getting extinct then you should limit the use of energy. We must start saving fuels for the future so that there will be no crisis of energy in India. Nuclear, solar, wind, and biogas are alternative sources of energy. With the help of modern science and technology, we will be able to save more energy and reduce the load on natural resources for generating energy. The solar panel can be used to generate electricity but it can only generate electricity for small firms. As modern science is developing, we are getting unique and innovative ideas to save resources and end the energy crisis in India.

Short Essay on Energy Crisis in India 150 words in English

India is one of the developing countries and the reason is the industrial and economic development. The development is possible because of the energy resources that India uses to generate power which not only helps machines but also households. India is rich in natural resources but because of the continuous consumption of energy, the natural resources are depleting at a rapid pace.

Fossil fuels like coal, wind, and natural gas are the primary sources of energy but they are becoming rare as there is an increase in the consumption of electricity and power. Coal is an important source of energy in India but due to the increase in population, the demand for sources of energy is increasing, thus leading to an energy crisis in India.

Therefore, to preserve the natural resources of the country, you can use some alternative sources like using solar, biogas, and nuclear form of energy. It is also stated that nuclear power is very important for the development of the industrial sector.

10 Lines on Energy Crisis in India Essay in English

• India is suffering from an energy crisis.
• The reason behind it is the continuous use of natural resources that produce energy.
• Some major natural resources are coal, lignite, and petroleum.
• Traditional resources can be used as fuelwood and animal waste.
• Developed countries are also facing an energy crisis.
• Petroleum energy is mostly used in automobiles.
• The demand for electricity in a country is increasing at a faster rate.
• Most of the sectors are dependent on electricity for daily operations.
• The industrial, economic, and agricultural sectors are the major users of energy.
• Solar, wind, and Biogas are great alternatives for natural resources.

Read More : India Essay

FAQ’s on Energy Crisis in India Essay

Question 1. What are the primary natural resources for energy generation?

Answer: Coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium are the primary natural resources.

Question 2. Which sector consumes most of the petroleum energy?

Answer: The automobile sector consumes most of the petroleum energy in India.

Question 3. What are the alternative sources of energy?

Answer: Solar, wind, and biogas are alternative sources of energy.

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Essay on “Energy Crisis in India” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Energy Crisis in India

Energy crisis and finding a viable solution for it constitutes an important contemporary debate in India today. Energy crisis has a great bearing on all socioeconomic development of a country and its sovereignty Indo-US nuclear deal trans-country pipelines and aggressive policy of securing petroleum fields in different parts of the worlds can be seen in light of the energy crisis.

India is not the stand alone case facing energy crisis. The world on the whole is facing energy crisis. Energy intense economies of the developed world copied with increasing demand from rapidly developing countries such as India, China, Brazil is responsible for huge increase in demand.

Decrease of petroleum productions in traditional oil producing counties such as Saudi Arabia along with political instabilities in countries like Iraq, Iran and Nigeria has led to scenario where demand outstrips the supply.

In India, there are number of factors which led to the Situation of energy crisis. There has been sharp rise in the consumption of energy in India since the last decade of 20th century The year 1991 unleashed the forces of liberalization, privatization sector and accompanying rise in energy tidal energy etc. These resources have failed to fill the gap of demand and supply of energy due to variety of reasons. Hydroelectricity is a cheap source of energy but is inflexible in terms of location.

There are many social and environmental concerns such as displacement of tribal’s, submergence of forests are associated with hydroelectricity. Other renewable energy resources such as solar power, geo-thermal, tidal power are in nascent Stage of development and are commercially unviable.

Non-renewable energy forms major chunk of total energy resources of the country. Coal oil or gas fired power Stations produce electricity. Petroleum derivatives are used in transportation sector. Problem with nor renewable energy is that India has to import a major portion of petroleum products as it is not naturally endowed with them in sufficient quantum. Soaring international prices of crude oil entails heavy outflow of foreign exchange and there is omnipresence of energy insecurity in the event of disruption in supply.

Nuclear energy is being offered as panacea for energy crisis being faced by India. Nuclear energy is location independent sources of energy i.e. an unclear reactor can be set in any locality to supply electricity. Further nuclear fuel is cheaper than the petroleum. India has gained a considerable expertise in the development and harnessing of nuclear energy.

India’s nuclear programme is three Stage programmes which encompasses the use of vast thorium reserves in the county. Nuclear energy is seen to be capable of bridging the gap between the demand and supply of energy in India. Of late, the nuclear energy programme faced problem of no availability of natural uranium for rapid expansion of nuclear energy in country. Natural uranium occurs in small quantities in India.

IndoUS unclear deal should be seen in light of the projected benefits of nuclear energy July 18 deal envisages that US will cooperate with India for the development of civilian nuclear technology and use its good offices to ensure NSG rules are modified in a way so that India would be able to receive natural uranium as well as advanced nuclear technologies for civilian use. The deal in turn obliges India to demarcate its civilian as well as military establishment under IAEA regime.

Former Honourable President Kalam has released a road map for achieving the energy security for the nation. He visualizes important contribution by hydroelectric power and nuclear power for the attainment of energy security. He also gives emphasis on conventional source as well as renewable sources of energy such as wind power for energy security of the country.

The Government of India has been pursuing other avenues also in order to achieve energy security. Government has entered into the agreements with countries like Qatar and Iran to improve the position.

ONGC Videsh limited is actively investing in overseas petroleum fields by acquiring stakes farming partnerships with different multinational consortium to secure hydrocarbons for the country.

Whole India is actively trying to achieve energy security at Various international levels. It is imperative that already energy infrastructure should be upgraded and made efficient. National grid system should be able to provide electricity generated out of hydel potential in Himalayas to plains of India. And wind powered electricity from coastal areas to interiors. In other Words, country should be capable of transporting energy access regions to energy deficit regions of the country.

There should be greater emphasis on renewable sources of energy. Government should provide funds for research and development of commercially viable methods of harnessing renewable sources of energy. India being a tropical country offers a great potential of solar energy and total energy Government should subsidies solar equipments as it has do for solar cooker.

Decentralized HEP and wind power are the commercially Viable resources of renewable energy in India today. Small hydroelectric power project made built to satisfy the energy needs of surrounding villages’ offers a solution for the electrification of rural areas in mountainous regions. Wind power is already a major source of energy.

State of  Tamilnadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat have taken lead in this sector. Government should encourage this private sector imitative by providing the required infrastructure at war footing. So that estimate potential can be harnessed private sector participation should be encourage this private sector imitative by providing the required infrastructure at war footing. So that estimate potential can be harnessed private sector participation should be encouraged.

National policy on electricity now provides that private units can have their own captive power plants and can even sell the surplus electricity to interested buyers. Government needs to provide tax incentives such as rebate in various taxes in order to achieve active private sector participation in energy generation.

Ethanol and Bio-diesel are the latest buzzwords in debates on energy crisis in India. Ethanol is produced from sugarcane and is mixed with petrol. Countries such as Brazil and USA are already using ethanol on large scale. Uses of ethanol in large scale will invariably boost sugarcane farming in country. Bio diesel is obtained by processing oil obtained from various plant seeds.

Jatropha is being promoted in vast wastelands of the country Experts feel that the problem of huge oil import bill and the price uncertainty can be mitigated by cultivating bio-fuel crop on the over 60 million hectare of wasteland available in the country. A northern railway is conducting experiment of running locomotive on bodies. Even if small percentage of ethanol and Bio-diesel is blended, immense savings on import bill can be affected.

Energy crisis in India can tackle by the effective involvement of civil society. In India, civil society is inactive in the field of energy conservation unlike the western countries. Energy conservation is the key civil society can lead the front by educating masses about the need to conserve energy. Energy conserved is energy earned.

Essay No. 2

Energy Crisis

God sent Adam with very few needs and strong limbs to fulfill those needs, as time passed and civilization advanced, man found himself more and more aloof from nature, lazy and luxurious and utterly dependent on machines. And machines need energy.

In the industrially advanced world of today, the demand for energy is increasing every day. We have machines and factories, buses, cars, trains and planes and ships and submarines. Energy is needed to run them. But this is not all. Man has grown so lazy that he does not like even to wind his watch. So energy is being used for running clocks and watches, typewriters, shaving razors  and many more things.

Wood later on coal was the first source of energy. Then came oil and passing through the stage of atomic energy man is no looking forward to solar energy.

We are naturally anxious because we know that a day may ultimately come when we have no more coal or oil. It will mean energy crisis. People who have made careful calculations feel that we will have used all available oil by the year 2025 and coal mines will also be empty in about thirty years. Man is on the lookout for other sources of energy. Our present hope seems to rest on nuclear power.

But nuclear power is full of risks. It is very explosive. Accidents and mishaps in nuclear reactors are very hazardous. The radio- active waves  from a  nuclear plant that has broken the radio – active waves from a nuclear plant that has broken down are a great threat to man. Moreover, when a nuclear plant down are a great threat to man. Moreover, when a nuclear plant is dead after 50 years it has to be buried and guarded forever.

The world is thus faced with energy crisis. The condition of India is no better. The demand for energy in India will need four times of energy by the year 200. The Government of India is taking steps to supply energy for non- commercial proposes from various sources such as bio- gas and quick – growing forest plantation but the rural poor are unable to pay the high cost of energy.

Scientists all over the world are trying to meet the challenge. They are trying to harness solar, water and air reserves. Hydro electric power is cheaper, so are air mills. Solar energy too has bright hopes for man. However, it si very expensive to establish the necessary infrastructure for tapping solar energy. Giant dishes are made to concentrate the sunlight on the thermal generators which use this sunlight to produce energy.

Nevertheless, all possible efforts will have to be made to save us from total darkness and helplessness. Scientists are doing their best but the major responsibility rests with the politicians , because it is sometimes lack of political will that hinders developments in every field. And what is equally important, man should use his physical energy more and more instead of depending on machines for every purpose.    

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Essay on Energy Resources in India

The below mentioned essay provides an anatomy of the Energy Resources of India. After reading this essay you will learn about: 1. Introduction to Energy Resources 2. Types of Energy Resource in India 3. The Energy Strategy 4. Energy Scenario.

Essay # Introduction to Energy Resources in India:

Energy resources are very much important in the context of economic development of the country. With the growing industrialisation, mechanisation of agriculture, and the development of transportation sector, the demand for energy resources is increasing day by day.

Thus a positive correlation exists between economic growth and demand for energy. Moreover, consumption of energy for domestic uses and public lighting has also been increasing.

In India between 1952-53 to 1987-88 the GDP had increased annually at the rate of 3.7 per cent while the energy consumption had increased at the rate of 6.2 per cent per annum. Inspite of this, the per capita consumption of energy in India is low in comparison to that of developed countries. In India, more than half of the population does not possess the capacity to purchase commercial energy.

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Again out of the total energy consumed, about half of it is obtained from non-commercial energy. In India the non­commercial sources of energy, mostly used by rural poor, are obtained from firewood, dung cakes and agricultural waste. But the commercial energy is obtained from oil and natural gas, coal, hydro-electricity and a little volume of nuclear energy.

Essay # Types of Energy Resource in India:

Oil and coal :.

In India the consumption of commercial energy is too much dependent on oil and coal. About 47 per cent of the demand for commercial energy is met through petroleum oil. With the growing oil crisis, the importance of coal has also been realised in the country. Coal has an advantage over other fuels as it can be suitably converted into other types of energy like electricity, oil and gas.

In India, the coal is the principal source of electricity, at present with the significant development of thermal power projects based on coal. About 60 per cent of the total electricity generated in India is available from these coal based thermal power projects. 

Power or electricity is considered as one of the major sources of commercial energy. Power contributed about 28.7 per cent of the total commercial energy consumption of the country in 1987-88. In India, the development of power is progressing at a considerable scale.

If we look at the installed capacity then the total installed generating capacity in India has increased from 2,300 M.W. in 1950 to 2,55,000 MW in 2015 (March).

Essay # The Energy Strategy in India:

Out of this total power generation in India about 60 per cent of it is generated through coal-based thermal power projects. The remaining 40 per cent of electricity is generated through hydro-electricity and atomic energy.

Considering the present power scenario of the country and the present energy crisis, proper steps should be taken for the proper utilisation of huge hydro-power potential of the country, which according to C.E.A. is equivalent to 75,400 M.W., along-with the development of non-conventional energy in the country.

The following elements are incorporated in the new energy strategy of the country:

(i) Accelerated exploitation of domestic conventional energy resources—oil, natural gas, coal, hydro, and nuclear power;

(ii) Proper management of oil demand;

(iii) Substitution of natural gas for oil products;

(iv) Conservation of energy;

(v) Exploitation of renewable sources of energy such as energy forestry and bio-gas, specially for meeting the energy requirements of the rural people; and

(vi) Intensify research and development on the emerging energy technologies.

In India, the shortage of energy is presently working as a major constraint of the industrial development. In view of the serious oil crisis faced at present due to soaring oil price, steps be taken for sustained increase in the production of coal.

Hydro-power potential should also be developed with a sense of urgency. Nuclear power, which is at present contributing a little more than 2 per cent of the total power generated, will have to be exploited with great vigour and urgency.

Moreover, in order to supplement the commercial energy produced in the country through the development of non-conventional energy, the Seventh Plan puts emphasis on “The development and accelerated utilisation of renewable energy sources wherever they are technically and economically viable, to improve the access to and availability of, renewable decentralised energy sources, particularly for the rural population and to reduce environment degradation resulting from deforestation.”

In order to realise these above mentioned objectives, the following efforts should be undertaken:

1. A large number of demonstration projects should be undertaken to popularise these new and renewable sources of non-conventional energy like wind, solar, bio-gas and bio-mass.

2. For developing indigenous technologies in this connection, the Government should support intensive R&D (Research and Development).

3. Attempts have to be made to create demand for this system through government intervention along with appropriate financial incentives as the initial cost of this system of renewable energy is very high.

4. An appropriate infrastructure for manufacturing, installation and servicing of this renewable energy system should be developed for its proper utilisation.

5. A large scale awareness programme should be undertaken to educate the people about the new technologies developed for the efficient utilisation of this system.

6. Lastly, substitution of non-commercial energy sources by commercial fuels should be discouraged and for that energy forestry should be developed.

Essay # Energy Scenario in India:

It is important to look at the present energy scenario of the country vis-a-vis other countries.

Latest finding from the Emerging Economy Report prepared by research and consultancy firm, Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS) shows that emerging economies could play pivotal roles in reducing the growing environmental anxieties worldwide. The report shows that most emerging economies remain for below the energy consumption as well as carbon emission levels of industrialised countries.

India’s per capita energy consumption of 12.6 million BTU and Indonesia’s (21.5) are almost negligible when compared to more economically developed nations like South Korea (170.2 m BTU per capita) and Taiwan (181.5 m BTU).

China’s carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission of 2.6 thousand metric tonnes per 1000 people is far below the 10.16 thousand metric tonnes per 1000 people in Germany.

The report has also identified several new energy paradigms that can fundamentally alter the ways in which end consumers access and use energy. Therefore, the new paradigm can dramatically change the adverse environmental effects of increased energy demand in the emerging economies.

The report highlighted that energy scarcity can lead to energy efficiency. To some extent the outstanding and latent demand for energy of most emerging economies, which is never met, can contribute to energy efficiency, at least in economic terms.

It is to the credit of India’s growth process that its energy intensity has fallen over time. In comparison to the rest of the world, particularly the emerging economies of Brazil and China, the use of energy per capita in India remained moderate and it increased at a slower pace.

Table 5.3 will clarify its position.

Table 5.3 reveals that total use of energy in India was 362 MMTOE in 1990 and then increased to 573 MMTOE in 2004 as compared to that of 1609 MMTOE for China, 205 MMTOE for Brazil, 1245 MMTOE for EMU and 2326 MMTOE for USA. The growth in the use of energy during the period 1990-2004 was 3.3 per cent in India as compared to that of 3.6 per cent in China, 3.2 per cent in Brazil and 1.4 per cent in USA.

However, the energy use per capita (KGOE) in India was 426 KGOE in 1990 increased to 531 KGOE in 2004 as compared to that of 1242 KGOE in China, 1114 KGOE for Brazil, 3906 KGOE for UK, 3990 for EMU and 7921 KGOE in the USA. Considering the huge size of population, the use of energy per capita in India is found to be moderate and its pace in also comparatively slower.

This could partly due to unsatisfied demand arising due to domestic capacity constraints. A large section of India’s population is still not in a position to buy and use any commercial sources of energy due to their poor economic capacity. Major portion of these energy resources are being used by a small section of rich and middle class people of the country.

Thus economic empowerment of this large section of poor people will lead to a huge demand for energy in near future leading to a serious energy crisis in our country. There is also enough evidence of wastage in use of scarce energy resources by the richer and middle class people of the country.

Sudden spurt in the use of private vehicles by these sections of population and the faulty vehicle policy pursued by the Government may lead to a serious energy crisis in near future in the context of shrinking national as well as global reserve of energy.

There is considerable room to improve energy efficiency, especially of motor vehicles and in the generation, transmission and end-use of electricity, commercially viable and economic attractive technology options in use in the developed world, should be considered and adopted.

Finally, wastage in the use of energy, especially in respect of petroleum and electricity needs to be immediately controlled both by pursuing the policy of imposition and awareness for attaining curtailment in consumption in the use of energy resources.

Thus under the present scenario of energy crisis, improving energy efficiency and demand side management measures like encouraging urban mass transport are quite important. Sustaining economic growth is critically dependant on significant supply augmentation and change in the composition of energy use.

Import dependence, for meeting the primary energy demand in the country, has been increasing over a long period since 1990-91 to 2006-07. In order to reduce incremental import dependence of country’s energy requirement in the medium term to long term entails a number of measures.

These include:

(a) Tapping India’s coal reserve with appropriate technology and reforms in the coal sector to increase competition

(b) Mitigating transportation constraints on availability of coal;

(c) Accelerating exploration of oil and gas within the country;

(d) Fully exploiting the nuclear and hydro-potential for power generation; and

(e) Expediting programmes for energy generation through renewable and non-conventional sources. Besides, a steps up of domestic production, the remaining deficit would have to be bridged by entering into strategic geo-political alliances to access the energy assets in the region. There is also a need for regulatory reform to implement open access in power sector to facilitate competition.

Finally, putting a curb on wasteful use of energy, especially in respect of petroleum and electricity is the urgent need of the hour. This needs to be attained by pursuing a rational policy of imposition and awareness for attaining the required curtailment in consumption in use of energy resources and also for pursuing a policy for conservation of energy in real and rational manner.

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Reporting by Siddhi Nayak in Mumbai and Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Lincoln Feast.

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