Post Diwali Blues – Issue #79
As Diwali morning dawned, particulate levels over the city were steeply down. It was, wrote newspapers, the cleanest pre-Diwali air in eight years.
News of the week
The week gone by has been relatively predictable.
To paraphrase a song by Dire Straits, rains came down and gave Delhi “a drink of water, a drink of wine”.
As Diwali morning dawned, particulate levels over the city were steeply down. It was, wrote newspapers, the cleanest pre-Diwali air in eight years.
Then came Diwali evening. The city burst crackers – pushing AQI back where it was before the rains. One sees this, thinks about the Delhi government’s decision to postpone odd-even because of the rains; the mass disregard for the Supreme Court ban on bursting fire crackers; those idiotic trucks spraying mist along Delhi roads last week; and again thinks that India’s AQI problem is a synecdoche.
Even faced with a visibly existential crisis – air pollution knocks 10 years off Dilli-wallas’ life expectancy – neither state nor society has figured out a response. The state sleeps on the issue throughout the year, waking up only after AQI worsens. Bodies like the Supreme Court pass orders without wondering about enforceability. The people themselves don’t seem to care. One wonders about our capacity to respond to more invisible, longer-term threats.
Other news. The CEA has approved the DPRs for 3,097 MW Etalin and 680 MW Attunli. Coming just a month after Teesta III was washed away, this is an extraordinary development. Etalin has been faulted, among others, by the union government’s Forest Advisory Committee. Given the delay, its project costs have already soared from Rs 25,296 crore in 2020 to Rs 32,813 crore now. All this calls Teesta III to mind. It too saw construction delays, a trebling of project costs, and eventually produced power at an uncompetitive Rs 7/unit. Etalin too will levy high ecological costs. One wonders about the benefits.
The CEA really should have been more mindful. Teesta III is not the only hydel warning in recent weeks. There is also J&K’s 850 MW Ratle hydel project. It was pushed through despite opposition, delays and concerns about viability. Last week came news that its owner, Megha Engineering, is indefinitely closing the project. “The notice cites a lack of work culture among the project’s workforce, frequent work stoppages, instances of manhandling of MEIL staff, and protests by local influential individuals as factors contributing to irreparable losses and a tarnished reputation for the company,” says a report in The Chenab Times.
Continuing with hydel, there is interesting news from Coal India. The PSU has been in the news for wanting to reforest some of its abandoned mines. Now comes news that it is also considering pumped storage projects on 20 abandoned mines.
The race between south Indian states to lure EV manufacturers is heating up. As CarbonCopy had written earlier, Telangana is trying to emerge as an EV hub. So is Tamil Nadu. And now comes news that Karnataka has revised its EV policy to pull in as much as Rs 50,000 crore of EV investments. This is an interesting race. Telangana has even tried to secure its own critical mineral supplies. Tamil Nadu enjoys a great headstart. Of all the EV two-wheelers sold in India, as many as 68% are manufactured in the state. And now, we have Karnataka trying to catch up. This is an industrial policy story just waiting to be written.
The centre is getting into this act as well. It is mulling a fresh expansion of its EV battery manufacturing push. The larger context to this, of course, is China. It continues to lead the world in EV R&D. India hopes to use manufacturing to bring in some global EV know-how.
Moving from renewables to nuclear, India is now mulling – in what is deeply premature action – a PLI for small and modular reactors. CarbonCopy, as things stand, is publishing a two-part series on India’s new nuclear push right now. Part One is already out. Part two, which will look at SMRs, will be out soon as well. Stay tuned. In the meantime, SMR maker NuScale made ripples last week. It cancelled its first nuke plant citing huge cost overruns.
In other news, the Adani Group had a good week. It announced capex plans for its data center project and bagged a $533 million investment from the US International Development Finance Corporation for its port project in Colombo. Coming despite Hindenburg, the investment is intriguing – and suggests the US too wants to use Adani to undercut China’s port expansion. Vietnam’s Vingroup wants to tie up with Adani for EV manufacturing. The company also became India’s largest private RE player. Access to state power has been a vital ingredient of its rise. As Indian Express has just reported, an Adani Green advisor is now on the MoEF’s hydel EAC, sitting in on projects where Adani’s Pumped Storage projects are being vetted. It is also thinking of exiting Adani Wilmar to focus on core businesses – like infrastructure.
Away from these headlines, larger processes continue unhindered. Punjab’s groundwater levels continue to plummet. Like Odisha’s continuing crackdown on folks resisting mining. Read this Guardian piece on a mine given to Vedanta – and the police crackdown which has followed. There is something new here. Vedanta isn’t mining on its own. “Vedanta recruited a local company, Mythri Infrastructure and Mining, to set up and operate the mine,” writes Guardian. This is a Vizag-based company.
Elsewhere, Santhals from three states – Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal – have come together to protest a proposed hydel project which threatens their holy site -- Luguburu atop Lugu hills under Gomia block of Bokaro. Niyamgiri redux.
Climate Non-Action of the Week
India is developing a “Digital Public Infrastructure” for climate finance.
Sigh.
Climate Long-Reads of the Week
The Reappearing Forests of West Bengal (Reasons To Be Cheerful)
How ignored landslide warnings led to Subansiri running dry (Indian Express)
‘Insanity’: petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels, says UN report (Guardian)
“Deon Shekuza is a peripatetic and charming climate influencer – as comfortable proselytizing green energy to youth on the hardscrabble roads and villages of this former German colony as he is in Namibia’s government ministries and the halls of United Nations conferences. Paid with respect if not a salary, he’s part of a rising breed of young climate activists across the Global South whose work, suggests one climate expert, may well determine the temperature of your world.” His gift of gab and hope may determine the temperature of your world(Christian Science Monitor)
China Pledged to ‘Strictly Control’ Coal. The Opposite Happened(Foreign Policy)
One Huge Contradiction Is Undoing Our Best Climate Efforts. The Atlantic on the world embracing renewables and fossil fuels.
‘Loss and damage’ fund talks leave developing nations at new disadvantage (The Hindu)
McKinsey & Company pushes fossil fuel interests as advisor to UN climate talks, whistleblowers say (France 24)
Book of the week
About a month ago, we decided to read only on climate change for a while.
That is how we read Storm Surge on Hurricane Sandy; Jeff Goodell’s The Water Will Come; and then started on The New Climate War by Michael Mann.
This book is taking time because we got sidetracked, given the Diwali break, into reading Ian McEwan’s Solar. After the Mann book, next will be Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.
For more on that book, read this interview with author Naomi Oreskes.