Between 2010 and 2035, India’s massive, growing and modernizing population is expected to constitute the second-largest request for energy. During this period, the country’s energy consumption is expected to double, accounting for some 18% of the total global rise in energy consumption. For better and worse, this massive jump is taking place simultaneously with at least two other critical events: India’s own arrival as a major global player, both in its own eyes and in the eyes of the rest of the international community; and the collective international debate over the need to counter global warming and embrace environmentally friendly and sustainable forms of development. As such, recent years have seen increased priority placed on the spectrum of work that falls under the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy – the only entity of its kind in the world.

As with many countries around the world, Indian anxiety over reliance on conventional energy sources began during the international energy crunch of the 1970s. Since independence, the Indian development approach had been dominated by massive socialist-inspired centrally directed infrastructure projects; although this approach continued after the spikes in petroleum prices during that decade, government officials realized that the country’s energy security would be best ensured by exploring all options available. As such, in 1981 the government set up what was known as the Commission for Additional Sources of Energy, housed within the Department of Science & Technology; the following year, a larger, more formalized body was created within the Ministry of Energy called the Department of Non-conventional Energy Sources. For the subsequent decade this department made initial forays into the alternative-energy sector, creating an indigenous body of knowledge, doing the initial research and development.

By the late 1980s, officials began to feel that some of the programs under work could soon be commercialized, leading to the creation of the India Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), which continues to function today as the central financing arm in state-backed renewable-energy ventures. Finally, after a decade, in 1992 the Department of Non-conventional Energy Sources was upgraded to a full ministry, renamed the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in 2006. Today, this remains the only ministry-level body focusing on renewable energy sources anywhere in the world.

Harking back to its roots in the oil shock of the 1970s, the ministry today is focused on helping to ensure energy security, although in reality its contribution is more backstopping on this issue. While other government bodies focus directly on energy security at either the national or local level, the ministry oversees the state’s research-and-development (and promotion) activities in alternative energy, attempting to harness at least some of India’s vast and varied natural resources for the creation of energy. Some of the areas of its most significant focus over recent years have included solar and wind power, small-scale hydroelectricity and biogas conversion.

Attached Bodies or Autonomous Bodies

India Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA): This is the financial wing of the ministry, mandated to make loans and other monies available for projects involving renewable energies and energy efficiency. From its creation in 1987 through January 2011, IREDA has funded 1921 projects involving renewable energy, committing Rs. 270 crore (USD $2.7 billion). Recently the agency also signed agreements for lines of credit with banks in Germany and Japan.

Technical institutions: The ministry operates four technical institutions, each of which specializes on a separate form of renewable energy. These include the Centre for Wind Technology, in Chennai; the Solar Energy Centre, in Haryana; the Alternate Hydro Energy Centre, housed within the IIT (Roorkee); and the Sardar Swaran Singh National Institute of Renewable Energy, in Punjab, which focuses on the development of biofuels.

Driven by a fast-rising energy crunch coupled with the international push for “greener” development and concerns over dwindling domestic coal supplies, recent years have seen the central government in India regularly unveil new and bigger medium-term plans for major alternative-energy installations, in a variety of sectors. In December 2010, the government announced an overall goal to quadruple the amount of electricity it uses from renewable sources to 72,400 megawatts (MW). The flipside to this plan is a commitment to reduce its “emissions intensity” – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted gross domestic product – by up to 25% of 2005 levels by 2025.

This is a massive undertaking, of course. As of late 2010 renewables only made up around 11% of the total energy mix, though the plan to quadruple this would actually only amount to increasing this figure to under 16%. The easiest to get anywhere near these figures would be to reduce the amount of coal used by India’s massive industrial sector. As such, current specific objectives for renewable energy include: another 10,500 MW of wind energy by 2012 (the country is already the fourth-largest wind-energy producer in the world); 20,000 MW of solar capacity by 2022. This level of new infrastructure takes significant funding, of course. As recently as 2009 investment in renewables in India stood at only around USD $2.3 billion – as opposed to USD $34.6 billion in China. While the 2011-12 national budget saw a substantial 20% increase in allotment for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, this still only amounted to INR 12.12 billion (USD 233.5 million).

Naturally, much of this money is also going into research and development. Of this recent budget, around INR 2.5 billion was allocated specifically for research and development, INR 1.76 billion of which was earmarked for rural use and INR 100 million of which was to be used for urban and rural applications. The previous year’s budget had seen an even more significant increase in the ministry’s budget, a jump of more than 60%. That year, 2010-11, also saw a significant new outlay for solar energy with the unveiling of the National Solar Mission, which includes the 20,000 MW goal noted earlier. Again, however, while this plan was widely applauded, critics have continued to wonder when and how these massive projects are going to be funded.

Gaming carbon

As a country that has proven notably hesitant to sign on to any legally binding international agreements to cut its national carbon emissions, India has been seen by many as ripe to take part in so-called “carbon offset” programs. Under this setup – officially known as the Clean Development Mechanism, overseen by the United Nations – countries are able to buy, sell and trade “carbon credits,” allowing them to continue to operate polluting industries while “offsetting” this pollution by, say, regenerating a forest of a certain size or similar undertakings. This system, overseen in India to a great extent by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, has proven to be controversial in several ways, including being open to “gaming.” In 2010, the UN specifically named five Indian firms for allegedly creating more of a particularly polluting chemical compound – so-called HFC 23 – just so they could then receive credit for destroying these same substances. According to the UN researchers, thus far half of the carbon-offset program’s credits had gone to firms in India and China for purportedly dealing with HFC 23. Reports leaked by WikiLeaks also indicated widespread fraud, suggesting that “most of the carbon-offset projects in India fail to meet the CDM requirements set by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

While the HFC 23 and related incidents dented India’s credibility on implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism, carbon credits nonetheless remain a significant source of income for the country’s continued attempts to install renewable energy sources; India currently has by far the largest single program in carbon credits, with the government’s 2010 decision to replace some 400 million incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient CFL (compact fluorescent) bulbs, reportedly saving some 40 million tons of carbon annually. The next-largest carbon-credit program around the world is saving just 1.5 million tons. Environmentalists have increasingly been pointing out the inefficacy of this program, however, warning that India’s own greenhouse-gas emissions have not actually come down during the time that the country has taken part in the Clean Development Mechanism; the project is also criticized for letting developed countries continue to pollute while ‘paying off’ developing countries.

Carbon Credit Scam Slur on Indian Firms (by Anika Gupta, Hindustan Times)

WikiLeaks: How India is Manipulating Carbon Credits (by Ayeshea Perera, First Post)

‘Strong arm’ Tactics to Get India to Agree to Strict Emissions Cuts Criticised” (by Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian)

Eating Biomass

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy sets itself apart from other government-led projects around the world in part by its wholehearted focus on biomass and biofuels as a key component of future (relatively clean) energy independence. This makes great sense given India’s long history of reliance on these products, including forest waste and cow dung; indeed, even today these forms of energy make up the daily energy requirements for more than a third of the country’s population, some 412 million people. Now the ministry is making plans to massively increase this capacity, suggesting that it is possible to go from around 1,160 megawatts (MW) to 16,880 MW of biomass-derived energy.

Pro-Biomass

On the surface, such a plan would seem to make great sense. The essence of biomass, after all, is rooted in village traditions of efficiency, using all parts of a plant or animal and thus having very little wastage. The government’s plans, too, are based around this ideal, ostensibly focusing on agricultural surplus and waste. In addition, India has for many years been attempting to come up with a sustainable program to produce biofuels, seen as another important way of weaning the country off of its current high levels of oil consumption while simultaneously allowing for lower levels of carbon emissions. Currently, government goals include blending 20% of India’s petrol with biodiesel by 2020.

Anti-Biomass

Critics of an increased reliance on biomass and biofuels generally point to the unrealistic need for massively increased agricultural space to achieve such goals. The government’s own projections already take into account this need, but generally suggest that these additional lands will be able to come from replenished degraded forests and fallow agricultural lands. Many worry that, in fact, this land is going to come at the expense of locals’ requirements, from land previously used as pastureland or for growing critical foodstuffs. This debate has particularly picked up momentum in the aftermath of the global food-pricing crisis of early 2008, when Western countries began increasingly exploring the balance between growing food and growing plants meant for biofuels.

Large- Versus Small-Scale Alternatives

Since independence, India’s leaders have had a tendency towards large-scale, socialist-inspired mega-projects. This trend continues in today’s debates over energy security, despite the increasing evidence that small-scale, decentralized energy installations frequently are more efficient and provide better, more reliable service for communities across a territory as large as India’s. Even while the country’s leadership dabbles in, for instance, small-scale hydroelectric projects in the hill communities of the Himalayas, biomass projects in villages here and there, and attempts to ramp up household-level solar or school-level wind installations, the vast majority of the money and effort continues to be spent on large-scale state-backed centralized projects: huge dams, coal-fired power plants, the new generation of nuclear plants. The debate over this latter issue is particularly interesting, given the widespread antipathy towards nuclear energy in India a decade or two ago, versus today’s characterization of nuclear projects providing a “green” alternative to oil dependency, at least in terms of emissions.

In favor of centralization of energy sources are two differing characteristics of the Indian government, ideology and “cronyism.” Of the former, the socialism of independent India’s founders has always led the central government to see the provision of services for the country’s masses as its sole prerogative; the accumulation of so much money, power and responsibility, however, has in turn led to significant corruption. Both of these elements inherently favor large-scale projects, particularly those in which funding can be channeled through political favorites.

While India’s future energy mix will undoubtedly require a combination of centralized and decentralized (“distributed”) projects, the government has come under widespread criticism for, thus far, failing to give adequate priority to the latter. Importantly, this criticism has come from a spectrum of ideologies, from big business to Western aid agencies to think tanks to environment-minded investors to activists. Indeed, even the Indian government has suggested that distributed generation will play an important part in the country’s energy future, having incorporated increased decentralized projects into its most recent plans; thus far, however, this remains a good idea poorly implemented.

Soft Deadlines

Undoubtedly the most pressing issue facing the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy – and its lofty ideals – is its ability to follow through on the grandiose plans that have been made in recent years. This follows a significant trend in Indian planning for decades: solid plans that ultimately prove untenable due to poor implementation, perhaps due to corruption or lack of adequate oversight. To the Indian government’s credit, in recent years it has come out with several far-reaching plans to integrate significant renewable energy sources into the national electricity grid, and to reduce the country’s dependence on oil and coal, both foreign and domestic. Yet the roadmaps on how exactly to achieve those goals, and perhaps some stringent even painful ramifications if those goals are not reached, remain notably lacking. The country’s largest renewable-energy project, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, already looks to be in some trouble, with nearly half of its large-scale projects currently likely to miss their initial deadlines. While some of this criticism is being meted out to private contractors, much is still being leveled at the Ministry of New and Renewable itself, including by the government. In late 2010, a scathing parliamentary panel highlighted numerous significant gaps in the ministry’s progress towards stated goals, calling into question both the ministry’s ability to achieve these goals and how seriously the ministry took these plans in the first place.

Vilas Muttemwar

Vilas Muttemwar served as Minister of New and Renewable Energy for five years, beginning in 2004. Muttemwar was a long-serving but relatively low-profile member of the Indian National Congress. In 2009, the decision to bring in someone as high-profile as Farooq Abdullah to head the ministry was seen by many as indicative of a new priority being placed on renewable energy from the highest levels of Indian government.