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Book Review: State of Renewable Energy in India: A Citizen’s report

Book Review State of Renewable Energy in India: A Citizen’s report Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi. 2014. Price: Rs.690.             Climate Change debate and green enthusiasm have given a great impetus to Renewable Energy worldwide.  Although India was hardly a culprit in Greenhouse Gas emissions, with abysmally low per capita emission of CO 2 of 1.2 tonnes in 2010, compared to 4.6 for China and 19.1 for USA, in absolute terms its emission was noticeable at 1,000 million tonnes, compared to  6,200 for China and 5,600 for USA.  The erstwhile high GDP growth of China and India—during global downturn—and the resulting implications for energy consumption and contribution to global warming, have brought international pressure on China and India to reduce nonrenewable energy consumption by increasing the portfolio of renewable energy on the one hand and energy conservation on the other. While China has embarrassed the West by taking the money available from West
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Gas Pricing or Gas Wars?

Gas Pricing or Gas Wars? V Ranganathan A recent book ‘Gas Wars’ by journalist Guha Thakurtha has been withdrawn by the publisher after RIL sued the author and publisher for defamation.  However, the Government has to now come out with   its stand on gas pricing and has a hot potato on its hand.  If it goes with Rangarajan Report, and hikes the price of gas to $8.4 per mmbtu, it will be accused of fostering crony capitalism, by giving a largess to private sector and if it opts for the status quo—not so low $.4.2 per mmbtu—price  it will be accused of not maintaining the sanctity of contract.  What should it do? Prof. Rangarajan’s gas pricing has been commented upon right from Surya Sethi, former Advisor, Energy, Planning Commission, and an MBA from IIM,  and Dr. EAS Sarma, former Secretary, Ministry of Power, and Ministry of Finance, but none of them have attacked the core of the problem, which is how to set the market price of gas when there is no single market price, and
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Electricity Pricing and Availability Based Tariff for Competitive Electricity Markets

Electricity   Pricing and Availability Based Tariff for Competitive electricity markets [1] Prof. V Ranganathan.   Professor (Retd.), IIM, Bangalore. Until recently electricity industry throughout the world was a regulated integrated natural monopoly [2] , with generation, transmission and distribution being vertically integrated [3] .   The industry was restructured in many advanced countries, US, UK, Europe, Australia and also later in developing countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal, Thailand etc.  Competition was the reason for restructuring in the US, where there was a big price gap between States, and the customers in high priced States wanted to shop around for electricity from low priced States, by having wholesale competition through open access.  At that time, the gain to customers and efficient producers and the loss to inefficient producers was estimated to be $100 billion, which was the motive force for restructuring. [4]   In UK, the driving force was the
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Climate Change: America, India and China

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  CLIMATE CHANGE: AMERICA, INDIA AND CHINA By   V. Ranganathan, Professor, IIM, Bangalore. Abstract All the three countries US, India and China have abundant coal and a large coal based electricity program.   All of them face stiff choices between low cost and carbon footprint in their future electricity generation program..   Of this US had maximum Carbon emissions, followed by China and then India.   This year, 2011, has seen the tipping point where China has overtaken the US for Carbon emissions.   For India energy intensity has actually decreased, as evidenced by energy-gdp elasticity figure changing from 1.2 to 0.8 over the last couple of years.   However while China is seen as making efforts to reduce emissions—in fact it has outmaneuvered US industries by offering lower cost emission reduction equipment—India   is often accused of not playing the ball.    The paper addresses   different approaches of the three countries to the Climate change issue and in partic
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