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Earth Power

Good News For Climate Change: India Gets Out of Coal and Into Renewable Energy (thebulletin.org) 196

Posted by EditorDavid from the going-green dept.
"India has been aggressively pivoting away from coal-fired power plants and towards electricity generated by solar, wind, and hydroelectric power," writes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Lasrick shared their report: The reasons for this change are complex and interlocking, but one aspect in particular seems to stand out: The price for solar electricity has been in freefall, to levels so low they were once thought impossible. For example, since 2017, one solar energy company has been generating electricity in the Indian state of Rajasthan at the unheard-of, guaranteed wholesale price of 2.44 rupees per kilowatt-hour, or 3 U.S. cents. (In comparison, the average price for electricity in the United States is presently about 13.19 cents per kilowatt-hour, and some locations in the country pay far more....) Consequently, with this massive reduction in the cost of renewables, India is able to shift away from the world's dirtiest fossil fuel, and to much cleaner sources.

While western countries continue to baulk at reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, India is accelerating its plans to lock in a sustained, aggressive reduction in the carbon emissions intensity of its economy. In fact, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, is targeting a fivefold expansion of the electricity generated from renewable energy sources by 2030 -- and this from a country that has already doubled its renewable energy in the past three years. This means that India is committed to more than meeting the goals of its national contributions in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement; it is going to "overdeliver," in the parlance of economists... What's more, the Indian government's plans include a progressive expansion of electric vehicles, putting the country on a path to progressively reduce reliance on expensive, high emissions oil imports....

As India benefits from the shift to domestic renewable energy, other emerging market nations are watching, keen to leverage the same benefits for their own countries. And therein lies a key path to global decarbonization and a much-needed solution to limit global warming.
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Good News For Climate Change: India Gets Out of Coal and Into Renewable Energy More

Good News For Climate Change: India Gets Out of Coal and Into Renewable Energy

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  • I see the second world gets their heads out of their asses quicker than the west.

    • Re:Good! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Saturday December 21, 2019 @02:48PM (#59544998)

      I see the second world gets their heads out of their asses quicker than the west.

      Really? Many EU nations have been building up renewables for over a decade. Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK pioneered wind power. India is just getting in on a movement has been steadily gaining momentum since the 1990s. Even in the US red states are increasingly going for renewables because they are the cheapest option and this despite the orange one and his outright hostility to everything except coal and fracking gas.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        The US has reduced their emissions, the EU even though Germany expanded their energy production like 3x is now more relying on coal than it was before (hint: they shut down their nuclear and now have to buy coal/oil power from neighbors and Russia)

        • The US has reduced their emissions, the EU even though Germany expanded their energy production like 3x is now more relying on coal than it was before (hint: they shut down their nuclear and now have to buy coal/oil power from neighbors and Russia)

          No, you pulled that statement out of thin air. Germany has significantly reduced their hard coal use and are starting to wind down lignite mining. Coal will be reduced by 12 out of 43GW of coal capacity by 2022 and is expected to decrease further to 17GW by 2030 with a complete hard coal and lignite phase out by 2038 at the latest. The interesting thing is that German voters (including ones in coal mining regions) would like it to happen even faster, i.e by 2025 and are willing to shoulder a bill of €8

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Uecker ( 1842596 )

          Please stop spreading this nonsense about Germany. From 2009 to 2019: Electricity consumption decreased from 577 TWh to 571 TWh. Production increased from 591 TWh to 607 TWh. Exports increased from 14 TWh to 36 TWh. Production from coal dropped from 108 TWh to 56 TWh and from lignite from 146 TWh to 114 TWh, gas increased slightly from 81 TWh to 93 TWh and oil decreased from 10 TWh to 5 TWh. Renewables increased from 96 TWh to 244 TWh. Numbers: from: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen... [ag-energiebilanzen.de]

      • So you think Germany turning down perfectly functional nuclear power plants and replacing them with natural gas piped in directly from Russia is a good idea by some metric? Please explain. Oh wait, you can't. You're just a knee-jerk ignorant clown.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Uecker ( 1842596 )

          I agree that turning down functional nuclear plants was not the right choice, but otherwise it does not look too bad: From 2009 to 2019: Electricity consumption decreased from 577 TWh to 571 TWh. Production increased from 591 TWh to 607 TWh. Exports increased from 14 TWh to 36 TWh. Production from coal dropped from 108 TWh to 56 TWh and from lignite from 146 TWh to 114 TWh, gas increased slightly from 81 TWh to 93 TWh and oil decreased from 10 TWh to 5 TWh. Renewables increased from 96 TWh to 244 TWh. Numbe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      The US is the only country that has reduced its emissions over the past few years. India has to do quite some catching up to be at the level per capita of the US.

      • Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday December 21, 2019 @03:24PM (#59545158)

        Well, given that the US is producing the more CO2 as the rest of the world per capita (except for some small countries, most in the gulf), and about 8x as much as India per capita, that is probably something urgently needed. It is in no way a reason to relax. The US is far, far behind most of the world here.

        It is pretty surprising that you think India has to do some catching up here, when India produces 2t CO2 per capita (2018) and the US produces 16t per capita (2018). Have you been listening to some orange liar lately?

        Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • OTOH, the US has 12 times the space for CO emissions compared to India, see https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

      • The US is the only country that has reduced its emissions over the past few years.

        They're also the country with the most low-hanging fruit so don't get too complacent.

      • Bollocks. The UK has reduced emissions

    • Possibly less existing infrastructure? Its more appealing to build a new renewables infrastructure when you do not already have a fifty-year-old non-renewables infrastructure for which all the capital costs have already been paid.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

      I see the second world gets their heads out of their asses quicker than the west.

      Pedantic nitpick: India is not "second world".

      1st world: Developed democratic capitalist countries aligned with Pax Americana.

      2nd world: Countries that were once part of the Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact

      3rd world: Everyone else

      America is 1st world. Ukraine is 2nd world. India is 3rd world.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      From the dawn of civilization until the Renaissance, all of Europe from about 100 miles north of the Mediterranean was the most backward place on Earth that appreciable numbers of people lived in. For most of that time, India was the most advanced or among the most advanced.

      People tend to see the world they were born in as the natural order of things, but really it's just a snapshot in time; societies advance and ebb; sometimes they disappear altogether. The US is about 5% of the world's population, India

    • Then India just need to fix its second problem, 410 inhabitants/km, a number that has four-folded since 1945 and is almost 6 times the density of Europe (73 inhabitants/km) and 12 times the density of USA (34 per km). Even China "only" has 150 per km.

  • More lies (Score:3, Informative)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Saturday December 21, 2019 @02:44PM (#59544984) Homepage Journal

    This is just more lies. India has been increasing coal consumption every year since 1965 and it doesn't look like it is going to change soon.

    Proof:

    https://www.ceicdata.com/en/in... [ceicdata.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DavenH ( 1065780 )
      It may not be lies, but there's a large difference between "politician claims country will get X% from renewables at date Y" and them actually doing it. Talk is cheap and investment is expensive...when it comes time to deliver it will be a different politician who will easily undo any legislation that costs them in the short term.

    • Re:More lies (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 ) on Saturday December 21, 2019 @03:22PM (#59545148)

      Even if true (I won't bother to check), who cares. If the world hasn't hit "peak coal" already, it will do so in short order. Coal is still fired in many power plants because they're already built & countries rely on their electricity output. But going forward, there's no way that'll continue. Few investors will sink their money in a new coal plant these days, with the falling price of renewables the economics just aren't there.

      Not to mention political support. Just yesterday, it was announced that in the NL another coal plant will close sooner than planned (Hemweg, Amsterdam, 630 MW, due to close early 2020). One down, 4 to go. And several of the remaining coal plants are burning more & more biomass besides coal. While imho that's questionable from CO2 perspective, fact remains coal is on its way out. Same in many countries. It just goes faster in countries that prioritize reducing their CO2 emissions.

      Well done, EditorDavid! Good news for everyone including nerds, period. Stuff that matters.

      • If the world hasn't hit "peak coal" already, it will do so in short order.

        Worldwide coal-power capacity grew by almost 35 gigawatts from 2018 through June 2019 as an increase in China’s fleet offset a decline of 8.1 gigawatts in other countries.

        The nation is on track to cap installed coal power capacity at 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. However, its coal and power industry groups are proposing further expansion to capacity of 1,200 to 1,400 gigawatts by 2035, according to the report.

        https://www.chinadialogue.net/... [chinadialogue.net]

        https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

        https://www.thegwpf.com/green- [thegwpf.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Installed capacity. How much are they actually generating?

          China built too many coal plants. The central government gave the responsibly for energy supply to regional governments, thinking they could react faster to demand. They built lots of coal but now most of the new capacity is mothballed because the demand has been met by cheaper renewables and greater efficiency.

      • 630 MW? Damn, I live a few miles from a natural gas peaker station (Ormond Beach Power Plant [virtualglobetrotting.com]) generates nearly 3 times that by itself... 630 MW is basically meaningless in terms of power generation.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You think they want to lose money just to make a point in destroying the climate? That solar is cheaper than coal is a new thing. Old numbers do not prove anything here.

      • Yeah, it is almost as if solar ISN'T cheaper than coal or something. I mean, really you guys keep really really wishing for things to be true, but they aren't. The world doesn't work that way. The fact is that India is expected to increase coal production over 11%.

      • The article is deeply flawed. I've no doubt India is adding solar, but to quote retail US electric rates against wholesale India rates is just misleading.Many parts of the US average 3c/KWH wholesale and can go up/down depending on demand. Heck as I recall, there are times when you have to pay to put juice on the grid if there is too much capacity and not enough demand.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by calebb ( 685461 )
      Windmills aren't even renewable - they required several hundred pounds of neodymium per windmill & nearly one hundred pounds of dysprosium. Each windmill generates hundreds of tons of toxic runoff (mostly in China), as well as hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 for the processing of just the neodymium. via Forbes [forbes.com]

      And check out this Yale [yale.edu] article on the environmental catastrophe caused by the massive neodymium extraction due to neodymium/dysprosium mining & processing in China.... largely dri

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        So about 100 tons of CO2 for the Nd? For what sized windmill (it wasn't in your source)? A MWhr is about a ton of CO2 from fossil fuels, so if that is a 1+ MW capacity windmill that only runs near capacity for a single hour a day, it would be a net gain over fossil fuels within a year. It wouldn't take long to catch up even including other parts.

        Fossil fuels are about a 400 g of CO2 per kWhr, while nuclear is closer to 60 g (a lot of mining and concrete involved) and wind & solar are 5-30 g. That i

        • CO2, pft. You're perfectly happy with the mining area turning into a toxic wasteland, Soviet-style, because it's not in your backyard. Oh yay, mod this guy up as a good eco warrior and virtue signaler.

          • You're perfectly happy with the mining area turning into a toxic wasteland

            I know right. Fuck wind power, let's mine coal instead, we all know that has zero environmental footprint.

            *note this post is mockingly sarcastic*

      • ...Except, y'know, you can recycle those bits since they contain such valuable elements. Like we do with pretty much all other valuable metals.

      • Why just call out turbines? Neodymium is, according to your link, also used in everything from computer hard disks, cell phones and cars

      • You don't re-extract the metals from the earth, you simply re-magnetize the magnets. So they are completely renewable. You build the windmill and it runs forever, minus bearings, lubricant, and (every few hundred years) magnet renewal. Bearings can be recycled using electricity. Lubricant can come from a variety of plant sources. Magnet renewal uses electricity.

        And you don't actually have to use permanent magnets. If it was actually a problem, you could switch to universal-motor generators. You only lose a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by calebb ( 685461 )
          Ok, how about the guardian? [theguardian.com]

          Here's a BBC piece with dozens of photographs & datasets backing up the claim. [bbc.com]

          Australia may be "ramping up production," but currently, nearly 100% of neodymium ore extraction occurs in China due to the environmental cost of extracting these metals from the ore. So we're burning even more fossil fuels (bunker fuel for cargo ships) to ship raw Australian neodymium ore to China for extraction.

          • It isn't responsive to anything I said, it doesn't contradict what I said, and it doesn't fix the problem with your argument.

            All that says is that China is evil. It doesn't say anything about neodymium.

            We should stop buying it from them. But still, the future would be full of windmills. It is just whataboutism. Even China's food packing plants are polluters. It isn't an argument against food.

      • We've had this mining in the US for a long time, they only stopped production for a few years because China was flooding the market.

        There is absolutely no reason at all that an area larger than the mine itself would need to be damaged.

        Maybe the Chinese just don't care about China, and that is the real reason why it is that when they do mining, they turn the whole region into a toxic wasteland?

        They turn the oceans around their harbors into toxic wastelands.

        The rivers in industrial zones have almost no fish.

        T

    • thats going to be historical data if the article is serious for their future developments which is the point of the article - they have woken up and seem to be seriously heading towards solar etc

  • What? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Colossus2Guardian ( 6341264 ) on Saturday December 21, 2019 @02:47PM (#59544996)
    "western countries continue to baulk at reducing their reliance on fossil fuels," What an odd ideology-driven fabrication. The U.K. had its first days since the Industrial Revolution of burning NO coal for electricity this year. Germany has days with 100% of grid power from renewables. The West Coast of the U.S. isn't waiting around for the Feds to move forward on renewables.

    • Exactly. The entire article is just another anti-West diatribe. The US has been reducing coal use dramatically (20% this year alone - the most of any developed country).

      • It's trendy now, even among the "Westerner" who wrote this article, to loath anything deemed "Western", and praise anything "Eastern" as ideologically and philosophically pure and superior. It reminds me of those pink-haired white anarchist-types who hate all white people or some such.

      • Except like most western countries the emissions are just moved offshore.

        So if you take into account actual emissions produced not only in-country but in other countries where all those cheap goods are made, then the US, etc still has a very long way to go.

        That is the reason the US and other 1st world countries were asked to contribute to 3rd world countries to help them clean up, but since US Americans are mostly greedy shits who voted in a greedy shit, the Kyoto accord is pretty well dead.

        I still wish Yel

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        The US is still that one big country at 16t CO2 per capita per year, India has 2t, most of Europe is around 8t.

        Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Exactly. The entire article is just another anti-West diatribe. The US has been reducing coal use dramatically (20% this year alone - the most of any developed country).

        [Citation required]. Mind you not that a citation is relevant. The quote specifically said western countries. Not western private industries. Private industries are being priced out of coal, but the USA as a policy is pro coal. So maybe you guys can vote for a party that isn't hell bent on fucking the world against the will of their own people next election.

    • You picked an example of 2 countries which are at the forefront, and a third country which has made the return to coal a governmental policy (note the article said western countries, not western private businesses disagreeing with how their country is being run).

      Just look around a bit. Germany's neighbours in both directions are building coal fired power stations (west of them the greens actually had to take the government to court to get them to stop). Poland actively held up initiatives of the to adopt a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The only problem this presents for "the West" is that denialists can't say "but what about India?" any more. With China having hit peak coal five years ago there isn't really any excuse for doing nothing now.

  • "..but one aspect in particular seems to stand out: The price for solar electricity has been in freefall."

    Not being able to breathe is also a great motivator.

  • since India still uses the renewable Dung Cake (and wood and coal) as traditional cooking fuel, what the total impact is on carbon emissions ?

    As late as 2016, 45% of rural Indian households didn't have access to electricity...

  • This sounds like good news.

    What I want to know is why I can't get 3 cents/KWh panels around here. I wonder what makes them so inexpensive in India.

    The cynic in me expects it's that cheap because of subsidies of some sort so that's not the true cost, but I have absolutely no evidence. Anyone have any actual idea (as opposed to speculation like mine)?

    • There's a vast difference in '3 cents per kWh' and '3 cents per kW'.

      When you're talking about panels, kW is how much power the panels can generate, ideally, at once, at peak. So if you need to run a 3kW load at your house and don't have batteries, you're going to (at the very least) need 3kW of panels, and that's definitely not going to cost three cents.

      On the other hand, the price per kWh is amortized over the life of the panels. If you pay $10K for your 3kW installation, and run it for 10 years, assumin

  • India still deep in the coal mining business. They sold the rights to China, so the coal is just being exported.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      Exactly. Shit like this is why I ignore eco-related news. It's all meaningless bullshit. And India is guaranteed to add at least another 1 million people to the world next month. 13 million per year. All of them are going to want to eat and need to shit, they're all going to want toys, they're all going to need school uniforms, and when they get older they're going to want cell phones and scooters and aspire to having cars and houses. And that's just India - every country is doing exactly the same. People w

  • I'm really glad for them! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Saturday December 21, 2019 @05:18PM (#59545472)

    I remember New Dehli in the late 80s. It was so insanely dirty. But most of that dirt was just one thing: Soot. The stuff coming out of the Rikshah motors.
    The second biggest one was plastic trash. (Mixed with paper and leaves and sand.) But that one is easy to solve.

    Only then came food waste. Which was only a problem *in the back alley", and nearly negligible compared to the others.

    You could tell people were suffering because of it. We were.

    So it makes me really happy to see nations like India finally starting to get on their feet. Cleaning up, having smart people with a space program, etc. And countries all over Africa etc getting proper infrastructure out of China's need for resources and obsession with job-creation schemes / full employment. I hope in 50 years, the whole third world thing will be pretty much solved. Especially when the Internet as a source of education for the poorest will be in full force.

  • India is adding 22% more [trust.org] coal fired power production in the next 3 years.
    • That's why this is good news. In the old story they're ramping up coal and in this new one they're ramping up solar instead.

  • Almost 22% of the population lives below the poverty line so they're used to not having cheap energy.

  • They are comparing some sort of price paid to the generator, in India, with a price (13.19 c/kWh) that bears no resemblance to the average price paid to generators in the USA, which is about 4.4 c /kWh in 2018 https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]

    and as for the rest

    "The 2019 report published by the Central Electric Authority predicts that coal will still account for around half of India's power generation in 2030 and remain crucial beyond then. India is projected to add 170GW of new coal capacity through 2043 w

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