India is a country so unique and huge that there are few facts or anecdotes can do justice to the sub-continents dizzying mix of culture, religion and languages. It is a country that simply must be explored, and one that I'm lucky enough to have just spent the past few months travelling across.On an environmental front it is apparently a country of extremes; streets are dusty and dirty, stagnant water is often filled with malodorous waste and the city air is thick with smog. On the other side of the coin, however, it is a country in transition. Its green-energy growth is faster than almost anywhere else on Earth and, by raw numbers alone, the average Indian lives a far more sustainable life than the average westerner.
But many significant challenges remain and in a country of more than 1.2 billion people India is a key player in the global effort to tackle climate change and environmental degradation. Every 1 in 6 human on Earth lives in India and its rate of population growth is the world's fastest, with India due to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2030. Each new generation rightly expects a more modern, energy-intensive life with greater social mobility, and this inevitably results in an insatiable rise in demand for energy and resources.
India's Energy Mix
Assessing India as a whole is difficult due to its size and diversity, with a large divide in living standards between the rich, poor, urban and rural populations. An estimated 100 million people, including 85% of the rural population, for example, still cook using a traditional stove fuelled from biomass and waste. According to the 2011 census, only 55.3% of rural households have access to electricity. The energy divide between rich and poor is wide, with one study calculating that the carbon footprint is 113% higher in the richest quartile of the population compared with the poorest quartile.
Despite a large proportion of India's population living an energy-lean lifestyle, India still has the world's fourth largest installed electrical capacity, behind only the USA, China and Russia. In terms of its energy mix, 59% of installed capacity is derived from coal, hydropower accounts for 17%, renewable 12% and gas 9%. The rapid addition of energy capacity, typically between 5 and 10% per year, has lead to an increase in India's CO2 emissions of 118.7% between 1990 and 2006.
Nevertheless, India's renewable industry is growing just as rapidly. In 2011 a record $10.3bn was invested in green energy, a 52% year on year rise that far exceeds other similarly large economies. At present around 400 million people live without electricity in India, and renewable energy may be the most effective means to provide these people, in even the smallest of villages, with a reliable energy source. Solar power, for example, is beginning to replace the 4 - 5 million diesel pumps that are currently used for water access. Wind power is also widely embraced, with India now the 5th largest producer of wind power in the world.Future Energy
So where does India go from here? It stands on the precipice of being the world's largest country in terms of its population and has great potential to support its growth using both fossil fuel and renewable energy alike.
There is certainly reason for optimism. Its newly-elected prime minister, Narendra Modi (right), has set the ambitious goal of providing enough solar energy for every home to power at least 2 light bulbs, a solar cooker and a television by 2019. India's new leader is no stranger to renewable commitments, having pioneered India's first large-scale solar power incentive in 2009 when he was head of Gujarat state. India certainly is well-placed to embrace renewable energy, with economist and activist Jeremy Rifkin describing it as 'the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy sources', on account of its many sunny days and windy plateaus.Fossil Fuels
However, doesn't India deserve its right to unbridled access to fossil fuels whilst so many of its people live in abject poverty? Doesn't it deserve its share of fossil fuels that we in the west used, and continue to use, to establish our lavish lifestyles? After all, India still lags far behind the emissions of the United States, for example, and on an economic and social level it lags even further behind.
Statistician Hans Rosling eloquently sums up the argument. Standing atop our oil-driven wealth, who are we to look down on those climbing the economic and social ladder, powered by the benefits of rapid growth, only to tell them to stop and use alternative energies instead? Surely their argument, that the west should make committed change to our extravagant energy use before Indian's should even consider changing theirs, is valid? Rosling's excellent lecture on the future of our world's population, which I urge you to watch in its entirety, sums this up well in this small segment.
This is certainly a valid argument and there is no doubt that the west must set more of an example in embracing alternative energies. The fact of the matter, however, is that the world is a different place to how it was when Europe had its industrial revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. In many ways, India needs to promote green growth. A World Bank report suggests that environmental degradation costs India $80 billion per year, or 5.7% of its GDP. It goes on to suggest that a 'low-emission, resource-efficient greening of the economy should be possible at a very low cost in terms of the economy'.
With global climate change becoming an ever greater threat, how India supplies its ever increasing energy needs into the future will ultimately impact on all of us. Let's hope that the trend for renewable energy investment continues, not only for the benefits to both the rich and poor of India, but because if one of the world's largest and most socially diverse country can do it, we all can.
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