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India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

nytimes.com

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Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#41

Post by greglindahl »

caliagent wrote: post #38
woodandsteel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of US states are charging ahead on their own. Take California, for example.

I have lived on California my entire life and all we have managed to accomplish were feel good initiatives which made for great PR puff pieces and were quickly shuffled down the road. I remember the first electric car, hailed as a true step forward, that was subsequently killed. Go to Santa Monica beach patrol stations and see all of the failed electric car station plug poles that were sawed off and tossed onto a hea…

Huh. Palo Alto is closing on 50% renewable energy for the entire city, not to mention the large % of electric cars.

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#42

Post by maldeh »

specializeded wrote: post #14
yumraj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the shadow of the damage they have already done. Really? See here: http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene... U.S. generated, per 2014 data, 1612 TWh from Coal and 1272 TWh from Gas. China generated 3681 TWh from Coal and 91 TWh from Gas. Compare this to India, which generated a mere 800 TWh from Coal and 89 TWh from Gas. And this when India has more than 4 times the population of US and acc…

The article is comparing India to India, the commenter is comparing India to India, you're not. A country having less output compared to more developed countries isn't surprising, nor the issue.

By your statement I presume you are alluding to India sourcing ~70% of its energy consumption from coal (compared to ~40% by the US), according to this source. I should point out that the parent poster's dataset comes from 2014, whereas the article is talking about a much more recent transition towards renewables (the Paris accord was signed 2015 and India took part circa 2016).

The OP's point is still reasonable in terms of both absolute magnitude as well as per-capita, in that India, as a developing country and yet one of the most populous countries on the planet, consumes far less energy than developed states and is not as immediate a threat to life as we know it on a global basis, such as the US is. Indian policies towards coal consumption, no matter how progressive they can get, cannot hope to match the immediate impact their counterparts in the US can achieve today (and choose not to), and the current US administration does not really have grounds to point fingers elsewhere.

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#43

Post by skybrian »

caliagent wrote: post #38
woodandsteel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of US states are charging ahead on their own. Take California, for example.

I have lived on California my entire life and all we have managed to accomplish were feel good initiatives which made for great PR puff pieces and were quickly shuffled down the road. I remember the first electric car, hailed as a true step forward, that was subsequently killed. Go to Santa Monica beach patrol stations and see all of the failed electric car station plug poles that were sawed off and tossed onto a hea…

I agree with some of that. You can point to things that didn't work, particularly in the early days.

But you can also point to stuff that did work. Early electric cars were failures, but there are lots of them on the road now.

Also, it seems you have no real criticism of Priuses. You just want to complain about them. Why? They work fine.

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#44

Post by fellellor »

danbolt wrote: post #20
kornish wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many ways it's similar to how telephony spread in the developing world. They skipped landlines entirely and went straight to GSM. And also how banking/payment is spreading in Africa: mobile-to-mobile, skipping credit cards entirely.

I love the elegance and futurism of paying with mobile phones like that, but do the telephone companies operate in a similar manner to financial institutions there? For instance, if I deposit money, do I receive interest? What happens to my funds if the phone company goes bankrupt? Are there similar regulations to banks?

I'm guessing the banks are still running the infrastructure. It's just they didn't bother with installing card networks since mobile payments is an evolution over them.

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#45

Post by jpatokal »

Last I checked, the reason India's coal power plants were running at 60% was not because of lack of demand, but because fixed prices make it uneconomical to produce coal and the government monopoly Coal India is utterly incompetent and inefficient even by Indian government standards...

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#46

Post by fellellor »

andrewwharton wrote: post #37

Ha! Try telling this to the current Australian government... The current narrative is that India desperately needs coal and our coal is the cleanest, so we need to dig it up [1] and sell it to them to help fight climate change, because otherwise they're going to get 'dirtier' coal from somewhere else. If you disagree, then you believe that Indians don't deserve electricity. And this isn't a strawman, this is almost v…

India imports a huge amount of coal from Australia because of local restrictions on mining, by the way. Otherwise we have one of the largest coal reserves on the planet.

Digging up coal to fight climate change is just silly, and I doubt that flies anywherre.

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#47

Post by all_usernames »

llccbb wrote: post #8
hueving wrote: post #7

India, "still a coal Goliath" is a better description. They burn a massive amount of coal compared to most countries. They've just scaled slightly back on a massive coal consumption plan they implemented in the last few years. Nice, but hardly worth any recognition in the shadow of the damage they have already done.

The damage of bringing a billion people electricity?

A billion more people who can now participate in the system that's already polluted the planet to the brink.

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#48

Post by sfifs »

andrewwharton wrote: post #37

Ha! Try telling this to the current Australian government... The current narrative is that India desperately needs coal and our coal is the cleanest, so we need to dig it up [1] and sell it to them to help fight climate change, because otherwise they're going to get 'dirtier' coal from somewhere else. If you disagree, then you believe that Indians don't deserve electricity. And this isn't a strawman, this is almost v…

Australian coal is currently largely used for steel making in India as "coking coal" as far as I know. Power generation is largely local coal. A few power plants that depend on imported coal have been proposed but hardly any have come through as the political process of acquiring coal has been undependable.

Source: Metallurgical engineering background

Re: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

#49

Post by zem »

Pxtl wrote: post #35
lacampbell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural people in the first world often do this as well. It's very common.

While carbon is carbon wherever, I'm not talking about rural. Trash fires were a regular sight on the streets of Thiruvananthapuram.

you should find this interesting: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/people-power-waste-m...
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