An underwhelming pivot – Issue #68
Lack of urgency in India's decarbonisation drive: Reports highlight underwhelming steps by Indian Oil Corporation and banking sector in tackling carbon emissions.
News of the week
Two reports last week highlighted a lack of urgency in India’s decarbonisation drive.
The first report, published in the Economic Times, dwelt on Indian Oil Corporation’s pivot beyond oil to become a 360 degree energy company. The oilco, we learnt, will put Rs 4 lakh crore into securing this pivot. A large chunk of this money, however, will go into hydrocarbons.
IOC wants to use Rs 1 lakh crore to expand its capacity to refine and turn crude oil into fuel. Another Rs 60,000 crore will go into a proposed “giant petrochemical complex” at Paradip in Odisha. Apart from these, the company wants to diversify into green hydrogen, an EV charging infrastructure and other infrastructure to enable electric vehicles to swap chargeable batteries.
This makes for an underwhelming pivot. While IOC says it’s investing in “projects that will help it achieve net-zero carbon emissions from its operations,” it’s investing Rs 1.6 lakh crore into activities with guaranteed emissions. As for the rest, they are forays into the unknown for the oilco. They may or may not work out.
Another news report, based on a study by Climate Risk Horizons, came with further cheer. Of the 34 banks the think-tank analysed, reported Mongabay, most are yet to formulate a policy on excluding coal from their portfolios. None have conducted risk assessments to calculate the impact of different climate scenarios in their portfolios.
Import season resumes
India has told imported coal-based power plants to run at full capacity till October. Power demand has been high in August – partly due to high irrigation demand in some parts of the country, humid weather elsewhere, and lower-than-expected wind power generation overall – putting pressure on thermal power capacities.
Looking beyond core strength
The private sector is moving faster. JSW has decided to build its own EV. Its call militates against what we know about the company's core competency. And so, why is it diversifying into a highly competitive, high-technology sector like EVs? News also came that the company wants to set up a 900 MW pumped storage plant in West Bengal. This is another diversification – and makes one think a clutch of Indian firms are looking to boost growth by moving beyond their mainstay (and stable) businesses into others expected to grow much faster.
Megha Engineering, known for civil construction, had similarly tied up with BYD.
IIT-B's clean-tech benefactor
An anonymous alumnus has given IIT Bombay $18.6 million for setting up a green energy research hub. “The focused areas include evaluating climate risks and developing effective mitigation strategies, climate change adaptation, and comprehensive environmental monitoring,” wrote Business Standard. “Additionally, the hub seeks to advance climate solutions, foster the adoption of renewable energy sources and energy-efficient technologies. It will facilitate research in several critical areas, including battery technologies, solar photovoltaics, biofuels, clean-air science, flood forecasting, and carbon capture, among others.... (it) will also offer industry-tailored educational training and cultivate strategic collaborations with global universities and corporations.”
This is not to say that things are going great. As Advait Arun argued last week in Phenomenal World, it’s facile to assume that the private sector can handle the energy transition on its own. You will see his report in the longreads section below.
Alarm bells, once again
The Adani Group illustrates one of those risks to perfection. Until recently, the conglomerate looked set to be a mainstay of India’s RE efforts. It won the PLI for polysilicon; announced a foray into pumped hydrogen and green hydrogen, had ambitious plans to double its renewable capacity to 45 GW by 2030. Post Hindenburg, however, the group is struggling to raise capital. Total has backed out of its green hydrogen plans.
Last week, too, the company made headlines. The Wire reported that the curious overlap seen in the case of the group’s acquisition of GVK’s Mumbai airport -- state agencies cracked down on the firm while Adani was trying to acquire its airport concessions – and acquisitions of Gangavaram and Krishnapatnam ports. Here is part one, part two, and part three. More critical reportage is expected to land soon as news emerged last week that OCCRP, FT and Guardian will release a comprehensive report on financial improprieties in India.
Video of the insides of a lithium-ion battery as it’s charging/discharging. Turns out the graphite anode, which is what you can see here, actually turns GOLD as it’s filled with lithium ions 👇
A manic monsoon
The monsoon in the Indian sub-continent this year has been a roller coaster so far. “Barring the cumulative rainfall over the country, this year's monsoon has been anything but normal and experts point to climate change as the underlying cause,” reported Business Standard. Also see this report by Roxy Koll and his fellow scientists. The week also saw the release of a clinical assessment of riverfront projects – and the logic that underpins them – in Down To Earth. One reads lines like this (about the Gomti in Lucknow) -- “The river channel width was drastically reduced to 100-130 metres from an average width of 285 metres" – and grasps both the beneficiaries (real estate) and the multitude of ecological risks that will inevitably be unleashed.
In other news
Battery recycling firm RecycleKaro is setting up a plant to extract nickel from batteries.
Jharkhand has signed an MoU with a firm called TCPL Green Energy Solution to set up a hydrogen fuel industry in Jamshedpur. This is worth a closer look. Jharkhand will soon need to replace a coal-sized hole in its economy.
Elsewhere, an especially frightening report came from Nature. Parts of the Amazon rainforest, it reported, are flipping from a carbon sink to a carbon source. (We cannot stress this enough. If there is one piece you read from this newsletter, make it this one (PDF)).
Also came news that the risk of fatal heat waves has risen sharply over the past 20 years. A study published in Nature Communications found that Europe will be particularly affected. Systematically collecting data on daily heat-related excess mortality for 748 cities and communities in 47 countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the US and Canada, the authors used the resulting dataset to calculate the relationship between the average daily temperature and mortality for all 748 locations. While on heat, also see the photos in this report.
Meanwhile, fossil-fuel subsidies surged to a record $7 trillion last year as governments supported consumers and businesses during the global spike in energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the economic recovery from the pandemic.
State of India’s birds
The news isn’t good. As many as 39% of bird species in India show a decline.
On the feasibility of a 100% renewable grid
We keep hearing about RE’s intermittency and the need for storage. This article argues, with empirical observation, that an almost 100% RE grid is possible for Australia – and, perchance, the whole world.
Biodiversity long-reads of the week
World’s largest private rhino herd faces a bleak and uncertain future(Scroll)
From the pages of ‘Baburnama’, amazing illustrations of Hindustan’s birds and animals (Scroll)
How climate change is helping pests and diseases destroy our food(Bloomberg).
Climate long-reads of the week
Unchecked mining is ruining Kashmir’s rivers. The government is doing little about it (Scroll)
Sustainability has lost its meaning as the nuclear lobby triumphs (EuroNews)
Academic Barbara Harriss-White takes apart the 2023 IPCC report (Madras Courier) for depoliticised policy-making.
African Arguments looked into the backgrounds of the 111 individuals that sit on the boards of Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund-US (WWF-US), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). It found that just over half are associated with finance. The article says: “The domination of financiers on the boards of the big conservation NGOs seems to have coincided with a rising emphasis on market-based solutions to climate change and the exponential growth of carbon markets... All four NGOs are heavily involved in these markets through their creation and management of carbon offsetting schemes and their development of methodologies and rules for monitoring them.”
Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’. (Guardian)
FCRA licence crackdown has plunged India’s non-profit sector into a crisis (Scroll)
Book of the week
We are reading A Stranger in Your Own City, by reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.
The book describes how Iraq has changed in the twenty years since Saddam was overthrown. A lot has been written about Iraq since then, but books by locals – on the aftermath of the USA’s oil geopolitics – have remained rare. This book changes that. This is a history written by the vanquished, so to speak. A very compelling read. Here is a review.