| dc.description.abstract | India has initiated economic reforms in the early nineties with the aim of globalization of the economy and making it competitive in the international market. Reforms in the electricity sector were initiated encouraging private sector participation in electricity generation. It was expected that reforms would attract private investment in electricity generation industry and lead to improvements in efficiency, and diffusion of new technologies. However, with limited private participation, efficiency improvements became important and began to be perceived as a source of cheap capacity augmentation. These changing generation technologies and efficiencies also have an impact on the environment. Presently the electricity sector contributes about half of India's carbon and sulfur emissions. A path of high growth in the electricity supply industry as envisaged in the zero-deficit electricity supply perspective plan for 20 12 is expected to have an impact on emissions. Thus concerns for the environment also have made it important to investigate the implications of the refoms so far on energy efficiency and technology selection for the electricity generation industry.
The research examines the influence of the electricity sector reforms on the electricity
generation industry with respect to energy efficiency and issues in technology selection and links them with environmental impacts using case studies of two Indian states - Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The following questions are addressed - i) What are the implications of the reforms on energy efficiency? ii) What are the dnvers of technology selection and fuel choice? iii) How efficiency and technology has
influenced emissions? iv) How do above implications for Indian state level reforms
compare with provincial level refoms in China?
The study involves collection of primary data through questionnaire surveys
administered to all generation units in the two sample states. The performances of
different units are benchmarked using a production frontier to identify scopes for
improvement. Levelized cost analysis is used to compare different generation
technologies. Emission intensity baselines are constructed using standardized
methodology. Future technology choices are projected king an established energy
environment model and spatial analysis of the results are performed to identify
locations that are in need of immediate attention. Finally, the present and projected
emission intensity baselines of two Indian states are compared with those of three
Chinese provinces with access to primary data from studies using identical
methodology. The comparison identifies similarities and dissimilarities in emission
intensities and their drivers across both countries.
The research offers a number of insights for the electricity sector in India. First, the
reforms had a positive impact on generation efficiencies. It also highlights that
generation efficiency is influenced by ownership, technology, and unit sizes. Second,
fuel choices are driven by fuel linkages and with constrained primary energy markets,
the least cost fuel choices are not always feasible. Among thermal technologies,
pithead sub critical and super critical plants are the least cost options, followed by gas
technologies. However, a number of variables, discussed in the thesis, influence the
ranking of technologies on the cost scale. Third, due to improving efficiency of
generation and fuel switch, the carbon and sulfur baselines are declining for thermal generation. However, the overall baselines not only change dynamically, but show inverse trends for different regions. There is a wide difference in the average and marginal baselines of these emissions suggesting need for policies directed at effective renovation. The baseline methodology as well as the optimization model and the spatial analysis indicate a disjoint in policies aimed at local and global environment. Finally, similar trends between Indian states and Chinese provinces suggest that informs influence energy efficiency and emissions in an identical manner across both countries. The contributions from the study include i) preparation of detailed generation unit level data and analysis, ii)setting up a model for benchmarking generation efficiency, iii) setting emissions baselines at the state level, iv) linking reforms and environment, v) application of modeling methodology and spatial analysis for identifying emission sources which require attention and vi)sub national cross country comparisons. | en |
