There’s Work To Do On Energy

Context: Centre should increase tax devolution to states, ease spending.

Steps taken to tackle the climate crisis

• By corporates: Reliance has announced Rs 75,000-crore of investment in clean energy.
• By the governments: The India-US Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership was launched at the Leaders’ Summit on Climate called by US President Joe Biden.
• The United States has set a target of reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 % below 2005 levels in 2030. India has set a target of installing 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030.
• Aimed to mobilise finance and speed clean energy deployment; demonstrate and scale innovative clean technologies needed to decarbonise sectors including industry, transportation, power, and buildings; and build capacity to measure, manage, and adapt to the risks of climate-related impacts.

Challenges in tackling climate crisis:

• Issues with net-zero carbon targets: They hide the continued reliance on destructive technologies in the pursuit of ever-increasing energy generation.
• The historical responsibility of industrialised countries in creating the crisis continues to be avoided.
• Flaws in the renewable promotion policy: The rapid increase in renewable energy (RE) capacity and partnerships like the International Solar Alliance have won appreciation. But this hides four crucial flaws.
• While substantially increasing RE, India is also expanding fossil fuel extraction and use; In the middle of the pandemic, the government has auctioned 60 new coal mining blocks.
• India includes mega-hydropower in RE, despite the ecological and social havoc it causes.
• RE production is mostly of the mega-park type; These projects have serious ecological and social impacts but do not even need an environmental impact assessment, under the faulty assumption that RE is necessarily “clean” and eco-friendly.
• Any amount of electricity demand is deemed legitimate, to be met in all possible ways (including dangerous nuclear power). But this is unsustainable, whatever the source of energy. 
• A shift from petrol- diesel to electric cars, for instance, would significantly expand devastating mining across the world.
• Such an approach also undermines democracy as people who protest the forcible acquisition of their lands for mega-projects are labelled anti-development.

Way Forward:

• Eliminate luxury and wasteful consumption:Unless luxury and wasteful consumption is eliminated, unsustainability and people’s displacement are inevitable.
  • Consumer behaviour that uses wasteful and luxury power can be changed and regulated, and power redistributed to those who do not have enough (should be part of the National Energy Policy).

• Focussing on rooftop solar as opposed to mega parks:
  • The Delhi government is supporting 150 government schools to generate rooftop solar energy, helping them save Rs 8.8 crore on electricity and earn Rs 8.5 crore from selling power back to the grid.
  • A study in the US shows that rooftop solar can create 30 times more jobs than mega-solar parks.

• Employing alternatives to energy-guzzling sectors: like urban construction and privatised transportation - 
• Groups like SECMOL in Ladakh and Hunnarshala in Kachchh have shown how sensitive architecture can dramatically reduce electricity use.

Conclusion: While we all have a right to the energy we need for well-being, we cannot keep demanding more and more, nor can we allow the un-sustainable and inequitable ways in which it is produced and distributed. Without us sustaining the earth, the planet will not sustain us.