India Can’t Afford Its Coal Addiction
Despite plentiful reserves, power plants can’t keep up with demand during the country’s blistering heat wave. It’s time to accelerate the switch to renewables.
India has a lot of coal but not the right kind.
Photographer: Money Sharma/AFP/Getty Images
Nothing makes you appreciate air-conditioning like high summer in India. Here in Delhi, temperatures are running over 100 degrees for much of the day, with two full months still to go before the cooling monsoon rains arrive. Unfortunately, just as everyone decided to crank up their ACs or at least their ceiling fans, electricity supply collapsed under the strain in large parts of the country.
This is not, sadly, a rare occurrence. It happens almost every summer and on other occasions when power demand spikes. There’s no clearer evidence that India’s electricity sector, dominated by coal-guzzling power plants and state-run utilities, simply isn’t up to the job. And the problem is only going to get worse: India has rapidly electrified in recent years and peak power demand has been growing between 8% and 10% a year.