Sustainable bioenergy for India: Technical, economic and policy analysis

India's energy challenges are multi-pronged. They are manifested through growing demand for modern energy carriers, a fossil fuel dominated energy system facing a severe resource crunch, the need for creating access to quality energy for the large section of deprived population, vulnerable energy security, local and global pollution regimes and the need for sustaining economic development. Renewable energy is considered as one of the most promising alternatives. Recognizing this potential, India has been implementing one of the largest renewable energy programmes in the world. Among the renewable energy technologies. bioenergy has a large diverse portfolio including efficient biomass stoves, biogas, biomass combustion and gasification and process heat and liquid fuels. India has also formulated and implemented a number of innovative policies and programmes to promote bioenergy technologies. However, according to some preliminary studies, the success rate is marginal compared to the potential available. This limited success is a clear indicator of the need for a serious reassessment of the bioenergy programme. Further, a realization of the need for adopting a sustainable energy path to address the above challenges will be the guiding force in this reassessment. In this paper an attempt is made to consider the potential of bioenergy to meet the rural energy needs: (I) biomass combustion and gasification for electricity; (2) biomethanation for cooking energy (gas) and electricity; and (3) efficient wood-burning devices for cooking. The paper focuses on analysing the effectiveness of bioenergy in creating this rural energy access and its sustainability in the long run through assessing: the demand for bioenergy and potential that could be created; technologies, status of commercialization and technology transfer and dissemination in India; economic and environmental performance and impacts: bioenergy policies, regulatory measures and barrier analysis. The whole assessment aims at presenting bioenergy as an integral part of a sustainable energy strategy for India. The results show that bioenergy technology (BET) alternatives compare favourably with the conventional ones. The cost comparisons show that the unit costs of BET alternatives are in the range of 15-187% of the conventional alternatives. The climate change benefits in terms of carbon emission reductions are to the tune of 110 T C per year provided the available potential of BETs are utilized.

Reservoir performance under uncertainty in hydrologic impacts of climate change

Relatively few studies have addressed water management and adaptation measures in the face of changing water balances due to climate change. The current work studies climate change impact on a multipurpose reservoir performance and derives adaptive policies for possible futurescenarios. The method developed in this work is illustrated with a case study of Hirakud reservoir on the Mahanadi river in Orissa, India,which is a multipurpose reservoir serving flood control, irrigation and power generation. Climate change effects on annual hydropower generation and four performance indices (reliability with respect to three reservoir functions, viz. hydropower, irrigation and flood control, resiliency, vulnerability and deficit ratio with respect to hydropower) are studied. Outputs from three general circulation models (GCMs) for three scenarios each are downscaled to monsoon streamflow in the Mahanadi river for two future time slices, 2045-65 and 2075-95. Increased irrigation demands, rule curves dictated by increased need for flood storage and downscaled projections of streamflow from the ensemble of GCMs and scenarios are used for projecting future hydrologic scenarios. It is seen that hydropower generation and reliability with respect to hydropower and irrigation are likely to show a decrease in future in most scenarios, whereas the deficit ratio and vulnerability are likely to increase as a result of climate change if the standard operating policy (SOP) using current rule curves for flood protection is employed. An optimal monthly operating policy is then derived using stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) as an adaptive policy for mitigating impacts of climate change on reservoir operation. The objective of this policy is to maximize reliabilities with respect to multiple reservoir functions of hydropower, irrigation and flood control. In variations to this adaptive policy, increasingly more weightage is given to the purpose of maximizing reliability with respect to hydropower for two extreme scenarios. It is seen that by marginally sacrificing reliability with respect to irrigation and flood control, hydropower reliability and generation can be increased for future scenarios. This suggests that reservoir rules for flood control may have to be revised in basins where climate change projects an increasing probability of droughts. However, it is also seen that power generation is unable to be restored to current levels, due in part to the large projected increases in irrigation demand. This suggests that future water balance deficits may limit the success of adaptive policy options. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Energy efficiency in India: Assessing the policy regimes and their impacts

In the recent years. India has emerged as one of the fast growing economies of the world necessitating equally rapid increase in modern energy consumption. With an imminent global climate change threat, India will have difficulties in continuing with this rising energy use levels towards achieving high economic growth. It will have to follow an energy-efficient pathway in attaining this goal. In this context, an attempt is made to present India's achievements on the energy efficiency front by tracing the evolution of policies and their impacts. The results indicate that India has made substantial progress in improving energy efficiency which is evident from the reductions achieved in energy intensities of GDP to the tune of 88% during 1980-2007. Similar reductions have been observed both with respect to overall Indian economy and the major sectors of the economy. In terms of energy intensity of GDP, India occupies a relatively high position of nine among the top 30 energy consuming countries of the world. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Climate change and forests in India: adaptation opportunities and challenges

Climate change is projected to lead to shift of forest types leading to irreversible damage to forests by rendering several species extinct and potentially affecting the livelihoods of local communities and the economy. Approximately 47% and 42% of tropical dry deciduous grids are projected to undergo shifts under A2 and B2 SRES scenarios respectively, as opposed to less than 16% grids comprising of tropical wet evergreen forests. Similarly, the tropical thorny scrub forest is projected to undergo shifts in majority of forested grids under A2 (more than 80%) as well as B2 scenarios (50% of grids). Thus the forest managers and policymakers need to adapt to the ecological as well as the socio-economic impacts of climate change. This requires formulation of effective forest management policies and practices, incorporating climate concerns into long-term forest policy and management plans. India has formulated a large number of innovative and progressive forest policies but a mechanism to ensure effective implementation of these policies is needed. Additional policies and practices may be needed to address the impacts of climate change. This paper discusses an approach and steps involved in the development of an adaptation framework as well as policies, strategies and practices needed for mainstreaming adaptation to cope with projected climate change. Further, the existing barriers which may affect proactive adaptation planning given the scale, accuracy and uncertainty associated with assessing climate change impacts are presented.

On the basin-scale detection and attribution of human-induced climate change in monsoon precipitation and streamflow

Detecting and quantifying the presence of human-induced climate change in regional hydrology is important for studying the impacts of such changes on the water resources systems as well as for reliable future projections and policy making for adaptation. In this article a formal fingerprint-based detection and attribution analysis has been attempted to study the changes in the observed monsoon precipitation and streamflow in the rain-fed Mahanadi River Basin in India, considering the variability across different climate models. This is achieved through the use of observations, several climate model runs, a principal component analysis and regression based statistical downscaling technique, and a Genetic Programming based rainfall-runoff model. It is found that the decreases in observed hydrological variables across the second half of the 20th century lie outside the range that is expected from natural internal variability of climate alone at 95% statistical confidence level, for most of the climate models considered. For several climate models, such changes are consistent with those expected from anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. However, unequivocal attribution to human-induced climate change cannot be claimed across all the climate models and uncertainties in our detection procedure, arising out of various sources including the use of models, cannot be ruled out. Changes in solar irradiance and volcanic activities are considered as other plausible natural external causes of climate change. Time evolution of the anthropogenic climate change ``signal'' in the hydrological observations, above the natural internal climate variability ``noise'' shows that the detection of the signal is achieved earlier in streamflow as compared to precipitation for most of the climate models, suggesting larger impacts of human-induced climate change on streamflow than precipitation at the river basin scale.

Assessing Indian cities for vulnerability to climate change

This paper critically evaluates the vulnerability of Indian cities to climate change in the context of sustainable development. City-scale indicators are developed for multiple dimensions of security and vulnerability. Factor analysis is employed to construct a vulnerability ranking of 46 major Indian cities. The analysis reveals that high aggregate levels of wealth do not necessarily make a city less vulnerable. Two, cities with diversified economic opportunities could adapt better to the new risks posed by climate change, than cities with unipolar opportunities. Three, highly polluted cities are more vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, and cities with severe groundwater depletion will find it difficult to cope with increased rainfall variability. Policy and sustainability issues are discussed for these results.