Adieu 2022! The end of the year note - Issue #35
The End of the Year Note
The idea of Energy Trends Weekly took shape in early April.
A trial run followed in the middle of that month – and the newsletter began sliding into inboxes by the end of the month.
In the early days, as each instalment went out, one fear would rear its head. “Will the next week be as eventful? Will there be enough developments to fill the newsletter up?”
Eight months down the line, that fear has evaporated. A barrage of large events has marked 2022. This was the year north India saw sustained heatwaves (and an incoherent state response); a crisis in the country’s natural gas sector; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the global polycrisis (debt shocks, food shocks, energy shocks); the resultant acceleration of clean energy projects; the growth and growth of Adani; the rise of Xi Jinping; the world starting to embrace deglobalisation, returning to a future of trade blocs; given green technologies, the world seeing a redistribution of supply chains; countries like India and Vietnam jockeying for a bigger share of global manufacturing; COP27, with Loss And Damage; COP27, with the Bridgetown initiative; COP15; and more.
Each of these are the themes the newsletter repeatedly covered – which is one reason for not providing hyperlinks to specific events. Whenever you have time – and if this is how you want to spend the final days of this tiring year – scroll down our issues here
Along the way, Energy Trends Weekly has changed. It started off seeking to provide a granular summary of energy/climate developments in the country. In the first couple of months, the newsletter was detailed enough to mention new EV models coming into India. Such updates now account for an ever-falling fraction of the newsletter’s text. Most of it seems to focus on larger processes – which, however, could also be a subjective bias. A more incontrovertible improvement has been in the newsletter’s understanding of climate change. It started off focusing (mostly) on the energy transition but is now starting to see that as one front in the battle against climate change.
This newsletter is now heading into its winter hibernation. It’s good to give the brain a break, even for a couple of weeks, from the world’s over-stimuli.
We will surface again in January. The newsletter’s role, as we see it, is to clarify the ongoing moment. How to do that better is the question.
News of the Week
The biggest news is COP15. Nations have agreed to protect a third of the planet for nature by 2030 in a landmark deal aimed at safeguarding biodiversity. Such a development could indeed staunch the world’s steady haemorrhaging of biodiversity. In the coming months, we will have to see how this will be implemented.
In other news, we heard about a breakthrough in nuclear fusion, an Assam MP has introduced the Climate Migrants (Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, ONGC Videsh is trying to get a controlling stake in its Russian oilfields, India is trying to revive gas-based powerplants, and Tata Power is planning a big solar push.
Apart from these, familiar processes evolved further. The deadline for the commercial coal block auctions has been extended. And Indian Industry wants a PLI for electrolysers.
Climate Longreads
1. 'India Must Develop An Ecosystem-Centric Approach For Agriculture', Indiaspend interviews Samaj Pragati Sahyog’s PS Vijayashankar.
2. New Yorker on ‘The Promise and the Politics of Rewilding India’
3. ‘Exactly how environment-friendly are Delhi’s e-rickshaws?’ (Newslaundry)
4. PM-KUSUM beneficiaries caught in a web of cost escalation, paperwork for loan (101 reporters). Also read this older report on Kusum.
5. Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site (Guardian)
6. This Spiritual Tradition Could Be the Most Poetic Bereavement Therapy Ever Documented (Scientific American on Odisha’s Soara tribe) (This is a must-read).
7. India’s Green Bonds framework comes with a lot of promise, but also grey areas (CarbonCopy)
8. For Andhra, Telangana Farmers Hit By Climate Change, A Helpline Works To Stop Suicides (Article-14)
9. Dharavi dreams: The new redevelopment plan ignores the rights of the people who built it (Scroll.in)
10. How wildlife conservation laws and policies have reduced the Forest Rights Act to a paper tiger. Read this report along with this one – about a wider set of factors weakening the FRA. (Both reports from Scroll.in).
11. A trash heap turns political hot button (The Morning Context writes on Delhi’s Ghazipur garbage dumpsite).
Books of the Week
This week,
three graphic novels on climate change
, courtesy The Conversation.
Also, given that essay in Scientific American, do check out Piers Vitebsky’s book on the Soaras. Living Without The Dead: Loss and Redemption in a Jungle Cosmos. I have read it, and it was stunning.