Electrification of public transport

* Malawi in the south-eastern edge of the African continent is one of the poorest countries in the world with per capita GDP of $1134. Following long spells of no rain, the country’s water reservoir level dropped so low around the end of 2017 that power supply even to its 10 per cent of the population, which had electricity, became difficult. The reason: 98 per cent of its electricity comes from hydropower.

* In China, officials in the northern provinces of the country were ordered to prioritise the use of power and burn coal — banned earlier — for heating in areas that had not converted fully to gas. China’s ministry of environmental protection had in March last year stopped use of coal for heating and power but the decision to allow it again was based on gas shortage.

* In a third development, Poland opened a 1,075-mw coal-fired power plant, the largest in Europe, last December at a time when the rest of Europe was moving away from the dirty fuel. Coal and lignite meet 90 per cent of the Polish energy demand and the country is yet to foray into nuclear power generation.
 

These developments in countries at different stages of economic development came as India started to talk about electrification of its energy needs, especially in the transportation sector. 

So far, there is no clarity on the roadmap to electrification of transport systems except in the case of Indian Railways which is targeting 90 per cent of its traction turning electric. This alone would mean a straight doubling of railway requirement for power to 32 billion units (kilowatt per hour) at 2015-16 railway hauling capacity. It does not include the demand for power from the growing metro systems. There aren’t any official estimates available on what will be the total power demand if all automobiles turn electric by 2030 and the Railways, too, turn 90 per cent electric from the current 45 per cent by 2021. 

The India Energy Security Scenarios (IESS), developed by the Niti Aayog, predicts a power demand of 4,791 billion units (BU) by 2047 if the economy is on a high growth path of 7.47 per cent. In case the economy is on a medium growth path of 6.7 per cent CAGR, the power demand will be 4,118 BU from 876 in 2012. The 2047 power demand scenarios in both the cases assume that 33 per cent cars, 70 per cent of two-wheelers and 35 per cent of three-wheelers would be electric, while 11 per cent cars would run on fuel cell.

Another recent estimate from Coal India says assuming a market share of 15 per cent by 2030, electric vehicles can result in incremental power demand of nearly 160 BUs by 2030, if a vehicle travels 10,000 km on an average a year and requires 0.3 unit of energy to run a kilometre.

That said, the per capita power consumption in India is woefully low. The latest available data of Central Electricity Authority puts the figure at 1.075 units in 2015-16, a third of 2014 global average of 3,126 units (International Energy Agency figures). The growth in power demand has been subdued with peak demand rising 5 per cent and energy requirement rising just 2.6 per cent in 2016-17 over the previous year. Which means power producers are left with spare capacity and have to often back down generation. This scenario will drastically change and power generation will require massive upscaling, if the sector hopes to meet the demand coming from electric vehicles and the railways.
 

If the power demand picks up and takes the path calculated by the IESS tool, both the medium and high growth scenarios will see overgeneration of power and, therefore, its availability will not be a constraint for electrification of transportation. India is looking to generate 175 GW of power from renewable sources by 2020--the idea is to meet the additional requirement with cleaner sources.

Though decarbonisation of the economy and India’s COP commitments are behind the country’s latest push for electric vehicles, the Malawi, China and Polish examples highlight that no one energy source can be relied on to meet the requirements of a country, especially if it is as large as India and has unmet demand. And just as diversified power sources are important, a transportation basket that is not too dependent on electricity is imperative for a country where just one spell of rain can cut off power supply for hours together.