Sunita Narain: Power to the people

DOWN TO EARTH

In this day of television grabs, policies are about slugfests. But let's discuss India's nuclear option, not as an absolute given or as the mother of all things evil but as a possible source of energy in a growing and starved nation. What does the future hold?

The Planning Commission's expert committee on integrated energy policy forecasts that even if India uses all options "" from investment in renewable sources to improving efficiency of energy demand "" it will still need the nuclear option. This is when, after a 20-fold increase in nuclear power generation capacity, this source of energy will provide a mere 5-6 per cent of our needs.

Now let's dig a bit deeper. The energy scenario has three facets "" no energy, unreliable energy and expensive energy. The fact is that energy in India is unavailable at affordable costs to large numbers of people. It is in this scenario we need to see if nuclear fits the bill.

The question is if the demand is decentralised, will distributed supply be more efficient? The world is beginning to understand the positive force of micropower "" decentralised sources of energy, and negawatts, which is doing more with less megawatts. The World Alliance for Decentralised Energy (WADE), a grouping of industry and researchers, estimates that decentralised resources generated 52 per cent of energy in Denmark, 39 per cent in the Netherlands, 16 per cent in Japan and 14 per cent in China. This estimate includes combined heat and power (co-generation) gas turbines of up to 120 MW, wind and solar photovoltaics. It has not included all other sources of microenergy, from biomass to hydropower.

WADE data shows that micropower has overtaken nuclear in the global market place. As, in fact, it has in India, where installed wind energy capacity is more than nuclear energy capacity. The reason is simple. Amory B Lovins, a highly respected energy expert of many years, writes in Nuclear Engineering International magazine that the most powerful force competing with nuclear may well be the legion of small, fast and simple microgeneration and efficiency projects. Even in the US, central thermal stations are no longer the cheapest or most reliable sources of delivered energy, because generators now cost less than the grid. The cheapest, most reliable power is typically produced near customers. These disaggregated systems then, says Lovin, are the swarm of mighty ants busily re-building the energy security edifice.

But ants, however mighty, need armies of supporters. It is here that I have a quibble with the nuclear grand plan. If money is no consideration, then our energy policy can afford to build nuclear plants with safeguards for waste disposal. More importantly, the actual cost of putting in these safeguards as well as the cost of waste disposal can be crafted into the energy price. But if money is a consideration, this price has to be evaluated for our needs and our pocket. A careful choice has to be made.

This is precisely the point at which an issue such as the nuclear option refuses the tidy simplicity of the television grab. It requires a greater attention span, and especially if a discussion on our energy future includes the inattentive president of the world's most television-addicted nation.