somehow when we compare India and China in all respects of developments, one cannot stop thinking about pigeons and cuckoos!
Countries are preparing for the forth coming CoP 21 meet in Paris. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) is keeping all the countries busy working out numbers to be shown at the forth coming convention. In a recent report, India has already raised its hand. The think tankers have realized that we are no match for the Chinese.
China’s installed capacity (electricity) is five times that of India. every person in China has access to electricity. So how can we prepare a framework of INDC to be submitted to CoP21. India needs coal power for the next 15 years. When such meetings take place, renewables take back seat. On other occasions numbers fly skyhigh……..anything can be said…….by 2020 Indi will have 20,000 MWe of solar pv power. Solar power can be sold at Rs 3/unit. If this is so then why renewables cannot fuel economic growth like other forms of fossil fuels?? Today China is not wasting any time to develop its renewables. It is generating 500 MWe from old oil wells by circulating CO2. By this the country not only is generating electricity, it is recovering money invested on the well. Its ROI is at its top. Do we do this? we talk about recovering more oil by slaughtering the reservoir to enhance ROI. China’s multi-storeyed apartments are space cooled by heat pumps…do we do this? It has already tested its EGS technology to extract heat from granites….do we do this. It has planned to revive its silk route and get power from geothermal…do we do this? It is not disaster to think of renewable energy for India. To our elite, renewable means solar pv and wind. The entire world is surging ahead to tap heat from granites. It is question of mindset and determination. Do we lack the technology? man power…?.. ideas? some one has already commented we should not compare ourselves with China but Indonesia. Makes sense. Our old gurus in gurukulam advise the students to go out and see the world. One should do this to know what others are doing, gain knowledge and get enlightened.
Now China is all set with good number of CO2 sequestration in a novel way……..In a recent Scientific communication (Published by Springer) Chinese scientists worked out the carbon saving by “afforestation engineering”. Their data shows that from 0.2 Pg of C in 1980 the carbon saving has grown to 1.03 Pg of C. The total investment in this “engineering” from 2001 to 2010 is 436 billion RMB. The total carbon sink value at the rate of US$ 30/t (Finland value) is about 190 billion RMB (about 43%). The total carbon sink amounts to 2% of the industrial emissions from 1981 to 2008. These numbers are with them to show at the forth coming CoP 21 in Paris. Carbon sequestration by agroforestry is not new and in fact an Indian scientists did work on it way back in 2004!. It is estimated that potential C sequestration rates range from 1.5 to 3.5 Mg C /ha/y. The financial value of carbon sequestration from these projects can be estimated by its value in carbon taxes of Finland and is potentially 190 billion RMB from 1981 to 2008, which is 43.4 % of the original investment. Hence although China’s afforestation projects make only modest contributions to offsetting industrial growth in carbon, the carbon sequestered, if valued according to some markets, is a significant fraction of the total project costs. These are realistic numbers. The countries at the CoP 21 can verify these numbers. We still work on ghost numbers with solar and wind. Such numbers can not be validated by any scientific means
Coming back to pigeons and cuckoos……pigeons go to wrong places to nest and lay eggs……cuckoos. They are smart!. Aren’t they?