Close to a thousand villagers stood for hours in the formation of a life-size human windmill near Khidki village in Alibag, in what could well be the largest protest for renewable energy in India till date.
They were demanding that the Maharashtra Government drop plans to build 10,000MW coal-fired thermal power plants in the region and explore renewable energy instead. The villagers said they were committed to fight the acquisition of their fertile land for coal-based power plants.
The community is opposing plans to set up thermal power plants over 8,500 acres of fertile land. The companies involved are the Tata Power Company Limited (1,200MW) and the Maharashtra Energy Generation Limited, a Reliance subsidiary, (4,000MW) at Shahpur in Alibag. The Patni group (500MW) and the Ispat group (2,000MW) want to set up their plants in the adjacent Medekhad Khadi.
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There is now little doubt that climate change will hit the poor hardest, particularly in Africa and Asia. Being unable to afford any better, poor people are forced to settle in areas that are highly vulnerable to the affects of climate change. With climate change leading to further decreases in already scarce resources like arable land and water, poor populations are going to be pushed further to, or even over, the edge.
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In a recently conducted study looking at household electricity use and transport across seven different income ranges, it was discovered that a relatively small, wealthy class (1% of the population) is hidden by the 823 million poor of the country who keep overall per capita emissions below 2 tonnes of CO2 a year.While the richest income class in this study, earning more than 30,000 rupees a month, produce slightly less than the global average CO2 emissions of 5 tonnes, this amount already exceeds the sustainable global average CO2 emissions of 2.5 tonnes per capita that needs to be reached to limit global warming below 2 degrees centigrade.
India faces two sharply contradictory realities. On the one hand there is a rapidly growing rich consumer class which has made the country the 12th largest luxury market in the world. On the other hand India is home to more than 800 million poor people who are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The richest consumer classes produce 4.5 times more CO2 than the poorest class, and almost 3 times more than the average.
By far the most pronounced increase in electricity consumption and thus CO2 emissions from the lower income groups to higher income groups is in the use of small electronic devices that make living more comfortable for those who can afford it. They range from DVD players to kitchen equipment and from mobile phones to computers. None of these products account for a really significant share of the CO2 emissions, but together they add up to 49% of the overall household emissions of the >30k income class.
With increasing income, consumption changes from only essentials like food and clothing to a variety of life style goods including electronics. Even with an increase in efficiency of all these products, the constant addition of new goods that consume electricity would drive the life style of the >30k class over the limits of sustainability.
An even greater difference in emissions between classes occurs in transportation with the richest income class emitting 7.1 times more than the poorest class. This is due to an increase in two wheelers, the use of cars starting at an income of more than 10,000 rupees a month and an increase in air travel for people earning more than 30,000 rupees a month.
If the upper and the middle class do not manage to check their CO2 emissions, they will not only contribute to global warming, but will also deny hundreds of millions of poor Indians access to development.
The use of inefficient lighting is responsible for 126 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year (7% of India’s overall emissions). Making CFLs, tubelights and other efficient lighting systems accessible to the poor by massive price reduction and prohibiting the sale of inefficient lights like incandescent bulbs, could cut these emissions by 95 million tonnes – that’s a 5% reduction of overall annual emissions.
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Our country is now the world’s fifth biggest carbon emitter — behind the US, China, Russia and Japan — despite having one of the lowest per capita carbon emissions.
The onus of energy and water conservation should be on people who can afford it and government must offer incentives to people to install green components in buildings. These incentives should come by way of reduced electricity tariff, lower municipal/property taxes and tax breaks to builders and property owners.
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If all new buildings in urban areas were made to adopt green building concepts, India could save up to 3,400 MW of power — enough to light up half of Delhi, or 5.5 lakh homes a year, according to estimates by The Energy and Research Institute (TERI), a thinktank headed by Nobel laureate R.K. Pachauri. This would also save the country Rs 40,000 crore per annum, TERI estimates. And, given that a four-member home consumes 540 litres of water per day, about 1 lakh additional homes could get water for five years from the annual savings we would make if all new buildings were green.
