A nine percent growth, projected in the new industrial policy would be a chimaera unless you have a policy in place to meet the growing energy needs, says a city-based energy expert. Dr Bhamy V Shenoy is quoted in The Hindu as saying that Mysore would require 150 MW per annum to sustain industrial growth at the projected pace.
Dr.Shenoy, who is less widely known locally as energy man, spent his US-based working life in oil, and has been energy advisor to the breakaway state of Georgia. He has advocated, for long, a gas-fired power plant to meet Mysore's escalating energy needs. His thoughts fit in with a proposal (Is it still live ?) to lay a gas pipeline from Cochin to Bangalore. A feeder line to Mysore would make a power plant eminently feasible.
I humbly accept your description of what I have been doing all these yeras. You are absolutely correct that I am just a big wind bag. I wished you were there to give a true picture of mine and lead me the right way. Can you please give me some suggestions on how I can improve.
May be you can explain how I am an infernal interpoler. We need more people like you and not mere sycophants .
May I humbly suggest that it will be in the interest of this discussion forum, and of the society as a whole to restrain ourselves from the strong urge to call names or even to put down others. We all have better things in life than to make our fellow citizens less comfortable in taking up public causes.
May I request that whatever the difference of opinion we have, let us restrict it strictly to issues? We all can gain a lot in patiently listening to others, even if we differ from their views.
Coming to the main issue of gas fired power station in Mysore to meet its power requirements, I have some ignorant questions to Dr. Shenoy.
1. In what way is the burning of gas better than that of the other fossil fuel, coal? I know that it may be less polluting and there is no ash to content with. 2. Won't there be CO2 emission, even if in lesser quantity? My modest understanding of science tells me that whenever we burn an organic material there will be CO2 emission, the large emission of which is causing a lot of concern to scientists in the the form of global warming. 3. Is it essential that a long length of gas pipe, with all the attended risks and issues really necessary, when we do not have any fossil fuel reserve of our own? 4. Is the availability of gas for power generation and other applications sustainable for long periods say, few decades? Do we have that much of fossil fuel reserve in India? Or is it advisable to depend on the import for long periods? 5. Shall we not consider, very objectively, to bridge the gap between demand and supply of electrcial power through many viable alternatives? 6. Shall we not make an honest attempt to preserve whatever gas reserve we have or we could procure for future generations also, for essential uses other than Power generation?
Why are we turning in to a nation / City of insufferable boors? It appears no discussion can take place without calling each other names which we ought to be ashamed of using in public or any where for that matter. If we do not agree with somebody or on some point, we just let go a barrage of words which only reflects our own internal makeup. 'Arumenataive Indian' is the right title that fits in like a 'T'! Coming to think of it, a majority of us are not even experts in any field. We should be happy that there is a forum to exchange information, to learn, to inform and to communicate our thoughts. There is no room for self congratulating , egocentric 'I'm right, you're wrong' types and ones who are always on the look out for a fight at the drop of a hat.
Come on guys, let's take it easy. Life can be fun, if we don't take ourselves too seriously.
I agree that whichever fuel we use like oil, gas or coal they will pollute. But of the three gas pollutes the least in every way like less green house gas, less SO2, less NOx etc. Of course as Sharma states, there is no ash problem .
If we do not burn gas now, what will happen to pollution or environmental degardation based on today's political, technical and economic realities while meeting the minimum energy needs? It is my intuiitive feeling that gas will create the least pollution. Yes we do burn the non rewables and it will push us more toward the use of renewables. But who should decide at what rate we should move toward the renewables? One may feel that we should do it today. Is it realstic? Market has been trying to push the economy towards renewables for the last 30 years. Soon after the first two oil shocks we thought that the day of renewables has arrived. Well we were wrong. Again recently we thought that renewable time is here when oil prices reached $78. But there is doubt not just based on today's falling oil prices based also on the prediction of more than two trillion barrels of oil and many trillion meters of natural gas.
Should/ could India depend upon other countries for its energy needs. Unfortunately it is a reality and energy indepdence at least for the foreseeable future is just a dream.
What my non-technical gray cells cannot fathom is why no one seems to have bothered about the versatile renewable source, Mysore and India can exploit fully, i.e. the Sun. One time much noises were heard about Solar energy research and in particular solar cells. No talk of wind power, tidal power either. I can imagine our coconut trees swaying in the strong wind many months a year. One Arab engineer narrated me a story. When oil men from Texas visited his country, they talked of oil most of the time. Having heard their chatter enough, the Arab engineer interjected their word flow and said to them ' of course your state and my country has one thing in common- plenty of Sun shine! Could we talk about solar power?'. The oilmen looked utterly stupified and left the room quietly! The Arab Engineer then smiled and said to himself' 'Of course the oil and Sun do not mix!'
Today solar power is a reality even in India and so also wind power. In fact one of Indian companies Suzlon has become an interntional wind power company selling wind mills in the US. There are many ways of getting solar power.
However when our politicians promise to give power free, why would any one invest in these alternative energy sources?
Where will the government get money to invest in these alternate energy sources?
The root cause of our energy problem is selling it either below cost or free. This looks very simple and it is. Till we as a society manage to charge what power costs we will continue to suffer because of energy shortage.
China is taking steps to add solar energy to its its energy portfolio. Though it is literally mopping up all available oil and raw materials in the world, particualrly from Africa, Middle East and South America, it is fully aware of the problems it is soaking up environment-wise and supply chain-wise. Hence the huge research funding going into renewable energy research including solar energy. When I was in China last year, I was impressed with their all round effort in energy research. One does not get the kind of cool response there that one gets in India when renewable energy sources and research are mentioned.
China should be admired in other ways too. At a time when science study is shunned in India, and IT education of any sort is preferred to science ducation, the the number of Chinese students studying sciences- particularly chemical and biological sciences are increasing every year as are their scientific publications.
The world has been experincing quite a few serious issues with conventional electrcial energy sources such as fossil fuels, dam based hydro power or nuclear power. There cannot be two opinions that these are finite in nature. I do not know what is the estimate of gas reserve in the nature, but certainly it is finite.
All the major gas power stations in our country have been facing shortages of supply to such an extent that the Director, Operations of NTPC, is known to be on record saying that gas for power generation cannot be a viable option in India, unless major gas discoveries are made soon. In the opinion of the majority of the industry observers, these sources cannot provide us a sustainable basis even in medium terms, and also are giving raise to serious environmental concerns. The prices are continuously shooting up and there are large scale uncertainties of supply due to international politics.
In this scenario, is there not a serious case for revisiting the whole energy sector? I believe the following points call for serious analysis, certainly in our country:
1) The conventional energy sources cannot provide us the required level of energy security on a sustainable basis; 2)We have to wisely invest on further developing the renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, bio-mass, tidal wave etc. to ensure reliable energy supply of adequate quality at realistic prices, and affordable to all sections of the society; 3) We have to start visualising the phasing out of fossil fuel power stations may be in the next 3-4 decades to protect our evironement; 4) There cannot be any alternative but high efficiency, transparency, and accountability in all sectors of energy industry. 5) Cross subsidies should soon be a thing of the past, and subsidy itself has to highly targetted. 6) Energy security is best achieved by managing our internal requirements with our own sources, and not by depending on import. 7) We cannot afford to wait for the govt. to take the lead in popularising the renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, bio-mass etc., but start taking private initiative to use them for smaller loads such as residences, small communities, street lights, schools, offices etc. 8) At any point in time, we sould not compromise with social and environmental issues connected with energy, even if we can temporarily tolerate issues with price and quality .
I am sure India cannot blame international politics per se for the energy uncertainty it faces, but could blame itself for not playing the international politics to its advantage. China with its over a billion population is very smart in playing international politics in securing its fossil energy requirements in the short and medium terms while cleverly planning for its long term requirements by encouraging research and development in renewable sources of energy. India with its billion population and rising in comparison seems to have done very little in securing even medium term energy requirements and that is the starkest difference.
The increasing rate at which we are burning fossil fuels, whether in West or East, North or South, and at the same time the rate at which we are destroying the forests, which could have been effective sinks for the resultant GH Gases, cannot allow us to be complacent in any sense of the term energy security. Each day in such a regime of feverish competition to consume more energy, can only mean hastening the crises of many kinds: global warming, severe health issues, loss of agricultural production, acid rains, severe stress on fresh water, large scale displacement etc.
It is unbelievable that the decision makers around the world are still in a denial mode. In view of the ever growing population in the developing world, higher aspirations of these people to have a better per capita energy consumption than what it is at present, and the intelligent marketing of electric gadgets of innumerable kinds, it is only imminent that the demand for grid quality electricity and/or piped gas will keep increasing exponentially, unless we act urgently in this regard.
To reverse this dangerous run-away situation, one cannot see any other way but to sincerely adopt techno-economically feasible alternatives like Demand Side Management, energy efficiency & conservation, and maximum deployment of renewable energy sources. There have already been pockets of excellence in each of these areas, and rest of the world should make all out efforts to adopt these measures in individual situations. When the cost of these alternatives, especially the renewable energy sources, has been quoted as a major disincentive we seem to overlook the cocept of Life-Cycle Costs, which should be objectively used. The social and environmental costs to the larger society seem to have been ignored in all such comparisions.
An empirical calculation for the situation of the state of Karnataka indicates that with the honest implementation of some of the above mentioned measures, the projected demand for grid quality electricity in the state by year 2016 can be brought down to today’s level taking into account the Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5%. This basically means that the existing electricity generating capacity in the state should be enough to meet the demand for grid quality electricity in year 2016; the rest of the demand for energy (basically electrical energy) for residential, commercial, street light, offices, agricultural consumers coming from small size distributed energy sources like wind, solar, bio-mass, bio-fuel etc. Thus saved electricity demand from these lighter consumers and the electricity from the already committed projects can be diverted to heavy consumers like industries, transportation etc. Such small size distributed energy sources also have other benefits like reduced losses in energy/electricity grid, reduced demand for agricultural/forest lands and fresh water etc. They are also certain to provide impetus to local employment, rural development, and to stop migration of rural population.
There is growing conviction that the small size distributed energy sources like wind, solar, bio-mass, bio-fuel etc. should play a major role in meeting the energy needs of the vast percentage of population, if there are to be habitable places on this earth by middle of this century. The earlier we take earnest steps in this regard it is better for the human kind, and those countries who are in forefront of these measures will have less to loose in the long run.
But the issues begging attention are of the essential political will.
