The Road to Decarbonisation

Context: While Decarbonisation has become a buzzword in climate governance, governments must remove obstacles of poorly designed planning systems, fragmented regulatory mechanisms, lack of investment.

Challenges in ensuring decarbonisation of the planet:

• Poorly designed planning systems:
  • In the case of Uttarakhand flood:
    • Presumption based on historical data: that such sharp shifts in natural conditions are infrequent — once in several decades.
    • Imperfect interpolations: Whilst the past is a useful guidepost, it is an imperfect one, especially in view of the spate of natural disasters across the world in recent times.
  • In Texas grid crash: authorities had a worst-case planning scenario built around the assumption of a 15GW drop in generating capacity but what they eventually lost was 30GW.
• Siloed and fragmented physical and regulatory oversight mechanisms in energy ecosystems:
  • Texas Crisis: had no umbrella authority with responsibility for the entire system and lack of interconnected electricity system with other states.
  • In the context of Uttarakhand:
    • Poor implementation of suggestions (made after Kedarnath flooding): regarding land use, watershed management and balancing between construction and the Himalayan ecology.
    • Lack of Inter-ministerial and inter-state collaboration: since energy is under concurrent list.
• Lack of investment in energy infrastructure: due to concerns with the robustness of “clean energy”.
  • E.g. In Texas, the grid was not resilient enough to absorb the surge in the flow of intermittent renewable electrons.

Way forward:

• Build structures that reflect the woven, multidimensional, interdependent and interconnected nature of the energy ecosystem.
• Create mechanisms for inter-ministerial and inter-state collaboration: within the country and multilateral cooperation internationally.
• Creating an “Alliance for a Carbon Net-Zero world”: as a multilateral forum of governments, corporates, financial institutions and civil society.