Four thousand power companies from across the world have been tested and ranked for their polluting powers in terms of the carbon dioxide they spew out. The US of course led the international tally at 2.8 billion tonnes annually. But what is of interest is that next came China and fourth was India at 583 million tonnes.
The study comes from Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent policy and research organization. Its results have been uploaded at www.CARMA.org. The massive data base is called CARMA - Carbon Monitoring for Action.
This has only emphasised the fears that it is not only the developed world but the poorer nations who are big carbon emitters. Power generation from fossil fuels accounts for more than a quarter of total emissions of CO2, the main culprit in global warming.
The centre has plans to add 78,577 MW (to the existing 1,32,000 MW) in the 11th Plan period. Most of this will come from coal based stations.
A recent study from CGD predicts that agricultural productivity in developing countries will decline sharply by 2080, as crops in areas closer to the equator suffer from the effects of increased heat and drought. Even without considering emissions from the rich nations, the increasing emissions in the developing world will create another climate crisis in 20 years, CGD study notes.
Policy makers are beginning to take global warming seriously, even if many still tag the line of per capita emissions. (In that regard, India’s emission rates are low.) It is true that equity must play a role in setting the green balance right. But rather than insist that we, in the developing world, will continue polluting (the planet be damned), a better approach would be to use international fora to armtwist the rich nations to deliver the technology at low or no costs.
Equally important is to make use of the carbon trading facility optimally. Today in the country there are many groups and individuals doing work in renewables. But many remain ignorant of the entitlements.
Big savings
Consider a simple study on an hearing aid solar charger developed by Bangalore-based company Flexitron.
One unit costs between Rs 180-300. So far, over one lakh units have been sold and every year 30,000 units are being added. The total number of units sold so far has helped save 16.5 MWh every year. With one charger being roughly equivalent to 52 batteries, the charger has helped save on 6.1 million batteries.
Most important, the charger units sold so far save 54 tonnes of carbon di-oxide per day by way of doing with normally-charged batteries. (This is around the amount emitted by 10,000 vehicles!) The figure has been arrived at by a rough estimate of the embodied energy in the making of one dry cell. This stands at 6W. One KW translates to 1 tonne of carbon di-oxide.
By multiplying the 54 tonnes by 365, we get almost 20,000 tonnes saved annually.
Compare this with the emission figures for one power plant. From the Carma data base, NTPC Ltd at its Vindhyachal plant in MP has an annual emission of 29,000,000 tons of co2.
What a modestly-sized charger can achieve then becomes significant.
Not only that, at today’s carbon banking rates of Rs 500 for one tonne, this would fetch nearly Rs 8 lakhs per month!
“This would be a handsome amount for the deaf and dumb people’s association,” notes Hiremath, the MD of Flexitron. He has employed all deaf and dumb people at his unit that assembles the solar charger. The charger won the company the President’s award in 1994.
This simple arithmetic clearly shows that it is not necessary to have mega projects. Many such small projects could make a big difference.
