After decades of promotion, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which filters carbon dioxide from smokestacks and injects it underground, has not resulted in the construction of more than a few working plants.
Therefore, proposals by the government think tank Niti Aayog in India to capture up to 70% of the nation’s emissions from the electricity sector have to be viewed as, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, dangerously shortsightedness. According to the body’s energy adviser Rajnath Ram, “We have abundant coal and we want to use it, sustainably,” Bloomberg News was informed.
China’s terminology for its energy strategy fifteen years ago sounds a lot like that, but new, more affordable, and environmentally friendly choices have emerged as a result of the technological revolution. India would be wise to go in that direction.
For CCS to function at any location, two difficult requirements must be satisfied. Initially, a sufficient number of subterranean reservoirs must exist to hold the generated waste gas. Second, fossil fuel prices and the cost of CCS itself have to be less expensive than those of any other technology. India is unsuccessful in both areas.
First, take the reservoirs. Oilfields consume more than 80% of the carbon dioxide injected underground for commercial purposes worldwide. An established method of bringing more crude to the surface is to force gas into petroleum reserves, which generates a revenue stream to partially offset the high cost of collection and storage (and adds to emissions).
But there are dreadfully few domestic oilfields in India. Petroleum reserves contain only 2.6 billion metric tonnes of the country’s estimated 359 billion tonnes of carbon storage capability, or enough to store barely a single year’s worth of emissions.
This takes us back to the second difficult need for CCS, which is cost. The most practical use of the 359 billion-tonne capability is to add carbon to subterranean salty water reserves. That technology is only functional when there is a carbon price that is both credible and strictly enforced. Nothing in the slightest suggests that India is making any such promises.
Beijing has been actively promoting these technologies for over a generation, and they are the victors of this race. According to BloombergNEF, wind and solar power are already less expensive than new coal generation in India, and even with the addition of a four-hour battery to guarantee power availability after sunset, they are still less expensive than coal with carbon capture.
Another resource that is not fully utilized is hydroelectricity. Similar to China, India gains from being next to the world’s largest supply of river power—the swiftly flowing Himalayan streams. India has ignored the industry while China has been so preoccupied with harnessing this resource that dam construction is already reaching its geological limitations.
Over 17 gigawatts of projects have been shelved because of local resistance and bureaucratic bottlenecks. Just over 29% of the nation’s hydropower potential is now used, with an additional 10% being developed. Raising that ratio would both manage the flooding that periodically destroys rural regions and supply India’s cities with terawatt-hours of power.
In the case of atomic power, the government intends to nearly triple its production capacity by 2031. It is unlikely to reach more than around two-thirds of that goal, and no new reactors have been linked since 2016.
Niti Aayog is attempting to address a real issue. India’s energy consumption is increasing at an astounding rate; in 2014, it was at 130 gigawatts or nearly the same as Spain’s generation capacity. By 2030, it might reach 400 GW, which is the same as running all of Japan and Taiwan’s combined power plants.
But acknowledging both India’s benefits and drawbacks realistically is the answer. The nation is endowed with an abundance of solar and wind power, the potential of which is already acknowledged in the long-term strategies of New Delhi.
As per the most recent 10-year plan that was declared last month, the National Electricity Authority anticipates that the yearly growth in fossil-fired production would be around 162 terawatt-hours over the next ten years, which is approximately the same amount that has been observed in the last two years alone. That would place emissions from the power sector well within the range of the earth’s demand and the consequent drop that India’s scorching people and the planet sorely need.
However, achieving the nation’s consistently failed goals for zero-carbon power is necessary to get there. Coal will make up the gap if renewable energy sources are insufficient, either with or, more likely, without CCS. India should not rely on impractical and untested new technology to contain pollution; instead, it should provide zero-carbon developers with the assurance and legislative support they need to prevent all that soot from burning in the first place. Burying the coal industry overall is a more effective strategy to decarbonize it than burying its emissions.
