Future energy transitions in India: an assessment of new and renewable energy technologies

Abstract

Energy systems development has always depended on choices made by consumers, producers, governments and societies. Historically, the choices are made in favour of those alternatives that are most satisfactory in terms of cost, quality, reliability, efficiency, security, convenience and social impact. As a result of these changing social preferences and choices, mankind has been witness to the past energy transitions from biomass to coal/steam and then to oil and more recently to the gaseous fossil fuels. Environmental and energy security concerns point towards future unsustainability of the present fossil fuel heavy energy systems. Our objective in this study is to analyse the past and future transition drivers and assess possible future energy transitions in India with a focus on assessing the future potential of the environmentally cleaner new and renewable energy technologies. The objectives of this study are proposed to be met by answering the following questions: 1) What are the energy transitions visible in the Indian primary energy system over the preceding decades?; 2) How have the technology markets developed in the New and Renewable energy technologies?; 3) What are the drivers and possible scenarios of future Indian energy transitions in the 2 1st century?; 4) What will be the penetration of New and Renewable Energy Technologies and effect on other energy and emission parameters under different scenarios?; 5) What policies can promote sustainable energy transitions in India? In this thesis, the drivers of the past energy transitions, their dynamics, inventory and status of new energy technologies have been arrived at through extensive survey of the available literature and electronic databases. Wherever possible, the information has been examined, crosschecked and ex tended to the Indian context after extensive interviews and consultation with the experts from industry, research institutions and academia. Unstructured and detailed interview were done with the experts for their opinion on various issues and their future behaviour. The Indian future energy scenarios have been created based on the internationally recommended United Nations scenario methodology. These scenarios have been analyzed in an energy y-economic-environment integrated modeling assessment framework utilizing both the top-down and bottom-up optimization models. The main constituent of this framework is the internationally acclaimed MARKet Allocation (MARKAL) model, a bottom-up model that allows long-term (100 years in this case) multi-period modeling, exogenous technological detailing and country circumstances based dovetailing. The quantification of the scenario drivers as exogenous parameters to the model-based analysis draws from UN-IPCC special global scenarios exercise, Indian National Communication (NATCOM) reports to the UN and expert opinions. Major energy system patterns are identified based on projections in the model results. The research offers a number of insights for the Indian energy system dynamics in a 100- year time frame. Firstly, the high fossil fuel content of the energy system is leading India on an unsustainable path of rising carbon emissions and increasing energy security concerns. Various sectoral energy transitions are simultaneously happening, electricity usage is increasing and gas is currently a favoured fuel for new power plants. Secondly, past experience learning curves suggest that there are several promising new energy technologies that could dominate energy systems in the long-term such as renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal), biomass, hydrogen and fuel cell, nuclear fusion and the carbon storage and disposal technologies that would allow continued use of fossil fuels at zero emissions. The model results throw interesting insights with important policy implications. Firstly, in most scenarios coal and unconventional oil and gas dominate future energy systems to varying degrees. Specific policies such as technology push or emission constraints lessen the dominance of the fossil fuels and increasingly favour adoption of the cleaner energy alternatives. This happens either through relative cost advantages created by technology R&D or through the reflection of environmental externalities in the market prices of emission-intensive fossil-fuels. Secondly, there is no evidence of a major shift to a particular choice of energy technology as the transition away from coal, oil or gas is taking time. At the end of the temporal analysis period of 100 years, the results show a portfolio of various technologies penetrating to limited extents. The biomass-based technologies have larger penetration because of the emphasis on technology R&D for its virtues of being a clean fuel with simultaneous socio-economic and sustainability benefits for the Indian rural economy. These findings suggest that it may not be a good policy to spread precious financial resources on a wide variety of new fuels to be on the technological frontier on all of them. The new technologies are global and in an era of increasing globalization, the technology developments driven by the developed countries and international institutions in any part of the world can diffuse to other areas with a time lag. At this juncture literature and this research suggests that it would be a prudent policy to invest in enhancing technological and institutional capabilities to harness biomass-based energy technologies in the future. The specific methodological contributions of this research include mapping of past energy transitions in India, extension of long-term (100 year) scenarios for India and their analysis in an integrated assessment modeling framework extending over 100 years: detailed technological specifications in the long term bottom-up model used for scenario analysis (ANSWER MARKAL model) in India: and policy assessment and insights in the context of future energy transitions in India.