Happy new year 2023 — Issue #36
In this first issue of 2023, we look at the global climate events causing a buzz in 2022, the Joshimath subsidence, and a flurry of announcements on renewables.
Hello again. We are back. As years go, 2022 has been intensely eventful. Large parts of the world saw sustained heat waves. Russia invaded Ukraine, destabilising global energy and food markets. The US began decoupling from China. A clutch of other developed countries, too, began reconsidering their supply chains’ dependence on China. Developing nations began vying to grab a part of these supply chains. Sri Lankans, faced with a debt shock, rose against the Rajapaksas. Amidst this turmoil – partly due to it – the world’s capex on renewables overtook its spending on new fossil fuel projects. In 2023, some of these processes will continue to play out. Others will fade, their place in the headlines taken by newer ones.
During our break, the team at Energy Trends Weekly has also intermittently wondered how to capture these changes better. Our capacity to spot emerging trends has to improve, for one. A friend suggested it might also help if Energy Trends takes stock of significant developments once a month to highlight larger patterns within the noise. We will try that.
In the meantime, one change is already apparent. We have moved from Twitter’s Revue to Substack. Elon Musk is to blame. He is shuttering Revue. Other things will stay the same. The basic design remains. Our focus, while tracking the world’s fight against climate change, will include — but not be limited to — the energy sector.
And so it goes. Onwards now to the events that made headlines in the second week of 2023.
News Of The Week
The costs of ill-advised construction are coming home to roost at Joshimath – and its neighbouring towns.
For decades now, India’s policymakers – and companies – have been advised against pell-mell construction in the Himalayas. Those concerns have been consistently ignored. Dams have come up. Large road projects, like Char Dham Yojana, have come up. These towns themselves have seen a construction boom that outstripped their carrying capacity. To enable construction, India has weakened its environmental governance architecture – it has put hydel execs at the helm of dam approving bodies; on occasion, it has voided the need for an environmental clearance entirely.
The local political economy, eager for the cash flows accompanying such development, has also played along.
Late last year, the costs began to catch up with Joshimath. Since 27 December, this holy town in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district found the earth it stands on sinking faster and faster. Few explain the roots of this crisis better than environmentalist Ravi Chopra. The Union Power Ministry, in the meantime, has cottoned onto local criticism of hydel projects and has written to the state government, saying the nearby NTPC hydel project is not to blame. For a counter-factual to the Ministry, read this Current Science paper on geologists’ concerns regarding Joshimath. For its part, the government has slapped a gag order on its scientists, telling them not to comment on Joshimath.
In other news, north India is heading – this week – into a period of extraordinary cold. Temperatures in the plans might fall as low as -4 degrees celsius, said meteorologist Navdeep Dahiya. A savage heatwave in summer and now this in winter. This, incidentally, is one more year when India fails to rein in air pollution. Politicians’ efforts, reported Washington Post, have been less substantive, more public relations. They have, however, managed to spend close to Rs 7,000 crore (USD 855.48 million) across 131 cities and towns. Hardwired into these reports is a larger question about dwindling State capacity even as the challenges before the country get ever more complex.
Turning to renewables, there has been a flurry of announcements. India is all set to float its first green bonds issue this month, not to mention float 56 GW of wind power bids over the next seven years. The country has also rolled back (partially) the basic customs duty it slapped on imported solar cells and modules. This is a welcome development. The duty slapped on imports in 2021 promised to push up the cost of solar projects, reducing its competitiveness against coal. This, however, is limited relief. Only developers who bid for projects before March 2021 are eligible. The country has also announced a Green Hydrogen Mission, joining the ranks of nations trying to develop a fresh competitive edge here. The mission, with an outlay of Rs 19,744 crore (USD 2.41 billion), seeks to make India a global hub for the manufacturing of Green Hydrogen, and the development of a production capacity of at least 5 million tons a year. Hydrogen, however, is a hard fuel to transport. For that reason, as CarbonCopy had reported, India has a better chance of emerging as a global hub in the manufacturing of cheap electrolysers.
Similar questions about viability circle a recent decision by the Arunachal Pradesh government – to hand over stranded hydel projects to government companies. The development is not surprising. As private firms exit the hydel sector, the government is turning to state-owned power developers. The questions, however, remain – about geological consequences; about the increasingly uncertain economics of these hydel projects.
In other news, it seems a clutch of EV manufacturers have been passing off imported components as domestically manufactured ones. The government is now taking a relook at its subsidy programme for encouraging domestic manufacturing.
Turn to fossil fuels and the news is striking there as well. India wants utilities to import 6% of their coal for the next nine months. This is odd. Just a couple of months ago, the government had said India’s coal stocks were comfortable. The government, said Reuters, expects high energy demand during the first half of the year. Also, major oil refiner Nayara Energy has a new owner. The firm had come into being after a puzzling set of transactions that saw ONGC Videsh overpaying Rosneft and Rosneft (along with Trafigura) overpaying Essar for its refinery. Now comes the news that Trafigura has exited Nayara. Hara Capital Sarl, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mareterra Group Holding, is the new part-owner.
Video of the Week
Economist Ashoka Mody tells Karan Thapar about his new book on the persistence of poverty in India.
Climate Long-reads
‘World’s longest river cruise’ could threaten endangered Ganges dolphin, experts warn (Guardian, on how India’s newly-launched luxury cruise on the Ganga must push the Gangetic dolphin to a Yangtze Dolphin-like fate).
Indian Big Business: The evolution of India’s corporate sector from 2000 to 2020, by Jairus Banaji.
Is it feasible to publicly fund the global energy transition? (Policy Tensor)
In other news, Frontline has a special series on the Great Nicobar Transhipment Port.
Proposed infrastructure project in Great Nicobar Island a mega folly, by Pankaj Sekhsaria
Great Nicobar development projects disregard risk in earthquake-prone area, by Janki Andharia, V. Ramesh and Ravinder Dhiman
Flora and fauna of Great Nicobar in great peril, by Ishika Ramakrishna
Great Nicobar: Whose land is it? By Ajay Saini
Should the leatherback turtle go to court? by Shrishtee Bajpai
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands need development but not at the cost of its unique ecology and people, byAjay Kumar Singh
‘Limited intervention was in the best interest of the islands’, an interview with environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta
Book of the Week
The Chipko Movement: A People’s History, by Shekhar Pathak.
In any list of critical moments in post-independence India’s environmental history, some events are bound to feature. The Sardar Sarovar Hydel project; The agitation to protect Silent Valley, the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy; the SC order on the Jarawa Tribal Reserve; and Chipko. In 1973, hill women in Chamoli hugged trees in their local forest to stop the government from felling them. In this book, newly translated into English, Shekhar Pathak tells us the story of this eco-feminist movement. Here is a review.
The bigger question, of course, is about the durability of such a movement. Joshimath is also in Chamoli. And so, with the inroads of modernity, what happened to local environmentalism? One has to read this book and mull messy questions.