India & Coal
Posted: Wed 19 Aug 2015, 12:25:41
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... red-future
China tends to get more of the press, but India has surpassed China in coal imports and is building lots of coal plants and has plans for many more. It's hard to argue that India doesn't have a right to supply its people with electricity. But the strategy is also putting its people in peril, but short-term (New Delhi has some of the least breathable air in the world) and of course long term from the many depredations of CC.
The Grim Promise of India's Coal-Powered Future
India is adding 2.5 times as much coal capacity as the U.S. is closing. Some 1.3 billion people need electricity — and the earth needs a break
China tends to get more of the press, but India has surpassed China in coal imports and is building lots of coal plants and has plans for many more. It's hard to argue that India doesn't have a right to supply its people with electricity. But the strategy is also putting its people in peril, but short-term (New Delhi has some of the least breathable air in the world) and of course long term from the many depredations of CC.
The Grim Promise of India's Coal-Powered Future
India is adding 2.5 times as much coal capacity as the U.S. is closing. Some 1.3 billion people need electricity — and the earth needs a break
Burning coal is both a proven way to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and the most dangerous fuel driving global warming. The United Nations has set itself the goal of reconciling these two things, and the results are shaky at best.
Energy ministries from more than 30 nations are meeting at the UN this week, at the Sustainable Development for All Forum, to debate how best to supply electricity to the 1.3 billion people who don't have it—at least 250 million of whom are Indians. The drive toward universal energy access is just one element of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, a super-ambitious worldwide to-do list that the nations would like to finalize in New York in September, shortly before they meet again in Paris in December to finish a climate change treaty. That's the shaky part.
Despite aggressive investments in solar-powered electricity almost everywhere, erasing energy poverty also means more coal for developing countries, and India is the developing world's most ardent defender of its use.