[sremani]

The electricity penetration and per-capita usage in India is abysmal. If Quality of Life for Indians is a concern (which it rightfully should be), India should open more coal plants.

US and Europe's path to prosperity went through Coal and to demand Indians and Chinese sacrifice while not making any thing substantial themselves (i.e. in US and Europe) is hypocrisy.

Indian population : 16% of world pop US population : 5% of world pop

Just one more stat for perspective.

[amluto]

> US and Europe's path to prosperity went through Coal and to demand Indians and Chinese sacrifice while not making any thing substantial themselves (i.e. in US and Europe) is hypocrisy.

Regardless of whether hypocracy is involved, wanting India and China to avoid the mistakes the West made is entirely reasonable. If nothing else, the US and Europe built coal plants before better technologies were available. India has access to modern natural gas plants, fuel cells, wind, solar, etc if it wants them. No one would suggest that India or China build lots of steam engines, after all.

[shripadk]

> Regardless of whether hypocracy is involved, wanting India and China to avoid the mistakes the West made is entirely reasonable. If nothing else, the US and Europe built coal plants before better technologies were available. India has access to modern natural gas plants, fuel cells, wind, solar, etc if it wants them. No one would suggest that India or China build lots of steam engines, after all.

Building steam engines and maintaining them was more expensive than building fuel based / electric trains. Even the initial cost was less. So the transition was faster and made a lot of economic sense.

Solar energy prices dropped to around parity with coal for the first time this year, hitting 4.34 rupees (about 6 US cents) a kilowatt-hour (kWh), while coal tariffs range usually range in between 3–5 rupees/kWh (about 5–8 US cents). It wasn't possible until April of this year to even consider Solar a viable alternative. With prices dropping (and hopefully continuing to drop until at least 2030) we can now think of installing new power plants backed by solar.

However, what happens to the old coal based power plants that power 20% of Indian populace (that is close to 3/4th of the population of the United States)? It is going to be super expensive to transition those old power plants to solar. Also, what about 24/7 power? Solar power plants don't guarantee 24/7 power. So you can't completely get rid of coal plants anyways. India has to do quite a bit of balancing act to provide energy for it's 1.3 billion and growing population.

It's not as easy as you make it out to be. If that was the case, United States would have already transitioned to 100% clean energy like it did with steam engines in the 19th-20th century.

[siscia]

European and Americans made mistakes during the industrial revolution for sure. However this is not a good excuse for other countries to make the same mistakes.

Also Europe and US had a much smaller population than India during the industrial revolution and we can imagine that the pollution produced during those years was significantly lower than the pollution produce by china and India (hopefully some technology advances made this point wrong); in a finite world this does makes a difference.

Finally I am not sure how well know were the implications of environmental pollution during the industrial revolution; for sure such implications weren't well know as they are today.

Granted it is a complex problem and tradeoffs will be necessary, however claim that the western world did the same is not a good motivation to destroy the environment.

[1024core]

> European and Americans made mistakes during the industrial revolution for sure. However this is not a good excuse for other countries to make the same mistakes.

Well, there's nothing preventing EU and US from atoning for those mistakes by paying for Solar installations in India. So why don't they?

[siscia]

Your question, while interesting, is not a counter argument to any of my points.

Anyhow, western countries do not have enough resource to finance clean energy in India. Or, at least, there are more pressing issue from the point of view of the average elector/citizen.

[shripadk]

> Anyhow, western countries do not have enough resource to finance clean energy in India.

Then they should refrain from advising India on it's energy program. The biggest polluter, after China, is the United States and the EU. Emission per capita is 16.5t and 6.7t in comparison to India's 1.8t. That is pretty crazy considering that the population of US is not even 1/3rd of India. If US isn't serious about moving to clean energy why would India be?

Every country has "pressing issues" of it's own and that includes India as well. The country needs energy and lots of it. It would be great if moving to clean energy was faster and cheaper than setting up coal based plants. It's just not the case.

[lenkite]

Dude, you know this "oh well they shat in the river so we get to do so too", is not a really great argument when our cities like Delhi are covered in dangerous smog, our coastal villages are regularly flooded with sea water and the cancer incidence rates in our population are skyrocketing.

[shripadk]

And as far as cities like Delhi being covered in dangerous smog: it has more to do with city/town planning than climate change alone. Most of India's "pollution-creating" populace is situated in cities. You and I both know how congested our cities are. The only way to fix this issue is decongestion. One positive outlook is the "100 smart cities plan" announced by Prime Minister. That should enable urban population to spread out. Factories will automatically move out of these over-populated cities reducing pollution.

Coastal villages being flooded with sea water is definitely a big concern. That is the direct impact of climate change and the only way to fix it is reducing CO2 emissions. However, the fix for it doesn't lie with India alone. India produces only 1.8t of emissions per capita. US, China, EU have to take the lead. Only then will it have any meaningful impact. With the US threatening to back out of Paris climate deal, the silver lining that existed for reversing/stopping climate change is at the verge of disappearing. Trump's climate change denial is going to cost the World dearly. It may not affect you and I today, but the impact will definitely be felt by future generations.

[shripadk]

I'm talking about "seriousness" of moving to clean energy. The emissions per capita is highest in China, US and EU. India comes 4th. Asking India to move quickly towards clean energy while these bigger emitters continue polluting doesn't work. It is plain hypocrisy.

Even if India alone accomplished it's goal of 100% clean energy it won't stop climate change. Even though I like some of Trump's policies I don't think he is correct when it comes to US contribution to fixing the climate issues. He has already said that he will be pulling out of Paris climate deal. That means not only will US back out of funding third-world countries in tackling climate change, it will itself not move towards clean energy at the pace it would have. If US does back out of the deal, forget reversing global warming and achieving the 2 degree celsius magic number.

[kerbalspacepro]

because they're too busy trying to make America great again.

[_FKS_]

While I agree - people from western world live way over what is needed - there's an issue with demography also in Asia. Kaya's identity [1] shows that the factor P, global population, is by far the most important. Control demography, you will raise the Quality of Life. At least while we have high EROI energy sources (like fossil fuels); without high EROI energy, demography will become (again) a dominant energy source.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity

[sremani]

I completely agree with you on this point. The exploding population esp. that is not well trained is a BIG headache for India, and they are not addressing it the right way.

[wbl]

The PPM250 levels in Dehli are worse than Beijing. The Indian government needs to regulate air quality or deal with a generation suffocated by its failures beyond the remains of the license Raj.

[hokkos]

If Quality of Life for Indians is a concern they should stop burning coal, because they a currently slowly killing their citizens with air pollution. Also US and Europe used coal because they didn't knew better but gave the world nuclear energy, just use it already.

[sremani]

Yes, India is also building many Russian Nuclear reactors. Because of sanctions India is stuck with Gen2 reactors and they are upgrading them to the latest. As an net energy deficit country, India's energy policy is both realistic and future focused. Its not perfect but it is hitting all the right notes, balancing short-term and long-term.