Sustainability, for Tomorrow

Two pieces in The Times of India today, made me sit up. One about the 'improving' power situation in Maharashtra and the other, an editorial piece about how bio-fuels can be made viable in the future.

Electricity is a precious commodity these days with power tariffs soaring in the last few months, and rightly so. Even though higher tariffs are supposed to discourage wastage, little impact has been seen from the consumption side with the demand rising every year. This lack of responsibility in using a national resource, will obviously bite when the supply falls woefully short of the demand.

But many ideas proposed by the state electricity board probably some even innovative, have been received with an almost criminal contempt. Sample this, the peak use of power happens during the day after 9 am. So during summer, if people take bath in the mornings and let their washing machines run before 9 am, a lot of pressure could be eased the peak time demand. But no, nobody is doing that, not even my family(though I do take bath before 9).

Though cities like Bombay, and now Pune, have been insulated from load shedding, major electricity overdrawing takes place in villages. Free electricity for farmers has meant that pumps run continuously and along with electricity even water is wasted. A solution to this can be found in the databases of the National Innovation Foundation, that has many ideas by ordinary people that could help tide over the rural power crunch, freeing up much needed electricity for industries, which suffer huge losses in productivity during load shedding that lasts for even more than 10 hours on some days in summer. This is where bio-fuels could come handy. Suppose we had pumps that ran on gas produced from biomass on the farm itself, it could cut costs drastically for the state. Also it would lead to a more responsible use of the pumps.


Electricity generation from biomass has not taken off in our country at all. Although, India ranks fourth in the world in installed wind power generation capacity, it is a far cry from the actual potential. Also, it is just 3 % of the total electricity generated in the country, nowhere close to that of Denmark which generates nearly 20% of its electricity from wind energy. A research is on to push wind production from large, high-cost wind farms to individual production units on a micro scale which would be able to light up small electrical appliances in homes, saving a lot on power bills and of course, electricity.

Here is a profile of an innovative Hydro Turbine with exactly this purpose in mind, by an electrician from Assam. The simplicity of the product and the mass appeal it can have is something amazing.

Obviously, India is far behind in the production and use of renewable energy. For a country of our size and with energy consumption rising with the surging economy, experts rightly say that lower energy costs could alone help to sustain the economic growth rate, even in times of global recession and given the poor state of infrastructure in the country.

This, is reason enough to pump money to encourage production and use of non-conventional energy in the country. There isn't really a choice here. If it is not by our choice now, it will be by falling oil reserves later. So there is a need to act now and stave off the impending energy crunch.

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