What is India doing to address Climate change
building electrified public transit, nuclear, hydro, transmission; green hydrogen capacity; decarbonizing steel
1. Electrified Urban Transit
The Delhi metro (392 km network) alone served more than 2.03 billion passenger journey in 2023. Delhi will likely cross Tokyo to be running the busiest metro system in the world by 2025. The first route on Delhi metro was available to the public in 2004, and we’re still building more 20 years on.
In 2022, an estimated 255,000 tonnes of fuel use and 766,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions were avoided by the Delhi metro alone. For 2031, DMRC estimates 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions will be avoided from the journeys it serves.
986 km of metro lines are being built in more than 20 cities. 733 km of metro network is already operational.
We’re also building electrified Rapid Rail Transit Systems (RRTS) to connect the busiest cities and suburbs.
2. Nuclear power
8 reactors with a combined capacity of 6.8GW are currently under construction. While we’ve previously partnered with USA, Russia and France, many of the new units will use domestically designed reactors.
Not only do we build nuclear, we build and maintain it quite economically. Electricity from the Tarapur plant (commissioned 1969, last unit in operation since 2005) sells at 3.4 INR/kWh (~0.041 USD/kWh) and from the Kakrapar plant (commissioned 2013) at INR 4.4/kWh (~0.053 USD/kWh).
3. Hydropower, Solar, Wind
10% of electricity generated in 2023 came from hydropower. About 15GW of hydro projects are under construction.
We’re also continuously adding solar & wind. The world’s largest solar park with a capacity of 2.245 GW is Bhadla, in Rajasthan. To manage intermittency, newer renewable auctions have storage included. The cost of solar + storage was INR 10.18/kWh in an auction in December 2023. In the most recent renewables-plus-storage auction in March 2024, 480MW capacity was awarded at INR 5.6/kWh (~USD 0.068/kWh). That’s a 45% decline in 3 months.
What’s the outcome? The state of Tamil Nadu recorded a new peak in electricity demand - 19.4 GW - on March 22, 2024. Solar power provided 4.2 GW (~21.6%) of the demand on that day.
Also, any facility with over 100 kW of power demand can easily procure renewable energy directly from developers.
May I recommend training AI models in India?
4. Transmission
This is a big bottleneck in renewable deployment in Europe and USA.
In India, 14,390 circuit km of transmission line was added in 2023. We’re also building Green Energy Corridors - dedicated transmission from the largest renewable energy potential sites, and setting up Renewable Energy Management Centres that use AI-based renewable generation forecasting.
To get a sense of the planning and operational complexity in building more transmission and managing the grid, consider India’s peak demand - 243.2 GW in August 2023. That’s 5 times California’s and nearly a 100GW higher than PJM’s - the largest interconnection in the US. Insiders refer to the control room at the National Load Despatch Centre as “The Temple”. It is magnificent.
Now add to that the distribution network needed to serve 1.4 billion Indians - 4x as many people as all of USA. And our utilities are still getting better.
Building transmission is one of India’s strengths, with Indian companies building not just our electricity grid, but that of dozens of countries in Africa, Middle East and Europe.
5. Hydrogen and Decarbonizing Industries
The National Green Hydrogen Mission has a $2 billion budget upto 2030 for setting up domestic electrolyser capacity, green hydrogen hubs - with storage and refueling facilities - at ports, and targets for using green hydrogen and ammonia in refineries and fertilisers.
The first green hydrogen plant for steel production was inaugurated last month. There are ongoing initiatives to use solar power in steel manufacturing, make operations energy efficient, increase share of recycled steel scrap in end products, move to electric arc furnaces and use hydrogen for directly reducing iron without coal.
But there’s an altogether different reason why India might make great strides in solving Climate change. Here, you can successfully advocate for innovation and for sustainable consumption. BOTH are needed to fix climate change.
P.S. Does being very vegetarian help?
More:
Interlinking rivers for cargo and passenger movement
More than 1.5 million electric vehicles sold in 2023, up 50% from 2022. Driven by two- and three-wheelers
Top 1000 companies by market cap listed on stock exchanges make mandatory sustainability disclosures. The largest 150 are required to make extensive ESG disclosures - covering emissions, water, energy, waste, employee safety, diversity - for their value chain as well.
Water desalination plants
Mineral processing and recycling facilities
Cleaning and restoring rivers - Started with Ganga action plan, now extended to 33 rivers across the country.
Bioenergy - Biomass Power has reached 10.85 GW capacity in February 2024, great for us as it also handles crop residues and prevents stubble burning - a major contributor to air pollution.
Incentives for domestic manufacturing for 2- and 3-wheeler EVs - these are dominant in tier 2 cities, small towns and the countryside. 2- and 3-wheeler electric vehicles make up >90% of EV sales in India.
Deploy 10,000 e-buses
Mandatory biogas blending in city gas distribution networks from FY25
What we need more work on
Water - conservation, purification, management, tightening and enforcing pollution control standards. Crucial now as manufacturing and mineral processing is rising.
Air pollution - tightening and enforcing pollution control standards on particulate matter and NOx, CO2, methane, sulfur hexaflouride
Handling waste and e-waste - Indore is doing a great job, more cities need this.
Protecting biodiversity - both wildlife and vegetation. More Elephant Whisperers please!
Soil - manage salinity and improve biomass in soils - helps fix water scarcity and improve food security
Climate awareness - as noted by Tyler, there’s no ideological momentum. There is an small, aware, climate-conscious segment of the population, but activism is fairly low, except on local matters in small communities.
Simplifying environmental compliance - make local, state-level, national policy requirements easy to interpret and work with. Companies want to do more, but there’s a lot to keep up with.
Systemic solutions for industry & communities - energy is not just electricity, but heat also. Integrated solutions for water + energy + waste will save resources, work longer term
Hot weather-friendly buildings - natural ventilation and materials that reducing cooling needs
Many thanks to Gautam Prajapati for reading drafts of this.
I’m the Founder of Telborg - an AI application for credible Climate research and writing. Telborg helps you write a first draft on any Climate topic in minutes using information exclusively from governments, companies and international institutions. Here’s a demo.
This post was originally published on my blog Floating Coordinates
This blog is inspired by Sam Matey and Tyler Cowen’s very interesting discussion which includes plenty on Climate and some thoughts on India. Also see Tyler’s note on Marginal Revolution.
Had a quick skim through it.
1) Investments in metro is cool. But they have financial sustainability problems. City governments need to invest in feeder buses to increase the utilisation of their metro networks.
2) I personally think nuclear is a waste of time and money. I don't think they will meet their cost and timeline estimates.
The article also claims that India is using different designs from different countries which is a big mistake. If you want to make nuclear work you need pick one design and keep building it multiple times.
I also am against nuclear for ideological reasons. All nuclear energy systems are a product of big government and/or corporatism. I'm more of a free market guy. But you guys are a socialist country so maybe you see it differently.
3) India should be moving towards a free market electricity system like Texas or Australia instead of relying on a public procurement system or vertically integrated private system. But again Indians are socialists so you might feel differently about this.
4) I don't think hydrogen is going be a useful product. I'm more a electrification maximalist. Even if it was the fuel of the future, other countries have more abundant and cheaper solar and wind potential than India.