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Coal trains in Bihar, India November 2023. by Salil Kumar Mukherjee
By Jo Nova
India is going gangbusters building coal
The need for energy in India is so dire, the Modi government just leaned on the power companies to get their act together. Instead of adding the usual 1 – 2 gigawatts of new coal power, which they have for a lot of the last decade, last year they ordered enough gear to build 10 gigawatts. And this year Modi wants them to aim for 31 gigawatts. Which is about the same capacity as the entire coal generation of the Australian National Grid (and our gas plants too).
Somewhat miraculously, they are talking of building them “in the next 5 or 6 years”:
India ‘Asks Utilities to Order $33bn in Gear to Lift Coal Output’ Rush to add more coal plants
India is rushing to add fresh coal-fired plants as it is barely able to meet power demand with the existing fleet in non-solar hours.
Post pandemic, the country’s power demand scaled new records on the back of the fastest rate of economic growth among major economies and increased instances of heatwaves.
July 5th, 2024 | Tags: Coal, Fossil Fuel, India | Category: Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, India, Uncategorized |  Print This Post | |
By Jo Nova
43% fewer cyclones is a good thing, right?
Using the same ClimateChangeTM reasoning the UN Secretary General uses, it’s clear fossil fuel use dramatically reduces the number of dangerous cyclones in the Northern Indian Ocean. A new study revealed an astonishing 43% decline in the number of equatorial cyclones in recent decades (1981–2010) compared to earlier (1951–1980) when fossil fuel use was vastly reduced. The researchers also point out that this is especially interesting because “the Indian Ocean basin has warmed consistently and more than any other ocean basin.” Could it be that warmer oceans are not necessarily terrible?
The study looked at the Low-Latitude Cyclones (LLC) that originate near the equator in the North Western Indian ocean. These LLC’s are smaller but intensify more rapidly than other cyclones, giving people less time to prepare. In 2017 LLC Ockhi caught forecasters off guard, travelled 2,000 kilometers and caused the deaths of 884 people in Sri Lanka and India.
This is obviously a benefit for the billion poor people who live around the Bay of Bengal. The researchers however, for some reason do not call for an increase in fossil fuel emissions. Instead they looked for and found […]
Written by Jo Nova
Are we paying attention yet?
The BRICS nations (in red, below) have just accepted six new members — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (green). The block now includes 46% of the population of Earth. They make 43% of the worlds oil, and about a quarter of the traded goods. The BRICS are going to abandon the US dollar and another 20 nations have expressed a desire to join. The India Narrative, called it “a new world order”.
In other news, the BRICS groups said they’d quite like the West to keep giving them money and free climate technologies to save the world from climate change, (while the West battles the climate demons and hobbles its own economies). The BRICS promise they will absolutely, definitely, maybe get serious too in a few decades.
While they’re busy burning record amounts of coal, they oppose any trade barriers done by the developed world in the name of climate change. We wouldn’t want things like pollution, child labor or slavery to get in the way of a good trade would we?
When President Xi brags that they are the “global majority” it’s just […]
By Jo Nova
Where do people live?
These marvelous spike maps mark out a 3D representation of the population density on each two-kilometer-square pixel of Earth’s surface. There are no outlines for countries, yet for the most part we can still see where the land meets the sea.
Credit goes to Alistair Rae, formerly a professor of urban studies and planning at the University of Sheffield. He used the EU’s population density data with the mapping tool Aerialod to create these glorious 3D maps.
And the map shouts “India”.
UPDATE: Do click to see the larger maps!
Alistair Rae, Stats, Maps n Pix Click to enlarge | CC 2.0
This is the global distribution of 8 billion people. The abundance of South East Asia is undeniable, as is the emptiness of the Sahara and the vacancy of Siberia. Antarctica is an invisible continent.
Australia and New Zealand are barely there. We can see how isolated Perth Australia is (where I live).
Annotated by Jo to show friends in the USA where Perth is.
Hawaii and Auckland likewise, stand apart.
Most maps originally came from Alastair Rae on Twitter in 2020 and later from the Visual Capitalist […]
China has already announced it will dig up another 300m tons of coal next year, and now India is planning to boost its own production by 500m extra tons in the next two years.
Coal mine in Dhanbad, India. | Flikr
Amazing what a strong market signal can do
TradingEconomics
India increasing domestic coal production, cuts environmental green tape
India needs a billion tons of coal a year, and digs up about 770 million tons. Suddenly the plan is to increase that to 1.2 billion tons “in the next two years” and if that means opening 100 old mines and throwing away the green tape, so be it.
Phys-Org
Soaring temperatures have prompted higher energy demand in recent weeks and left India facing a 25-million-tonne shortfall…
The government hopes to woo private mining giants—like Vedanta and Adani—to revive more than 100 dormant coal mines previously deemed too expensive to operate, using new technology and fresh capital. …the Environment Ministry said it has allowed a “special dispensation” to the Ministry of Coal to relax certain requirements—like public consultations—so mines could operate at increased capacities. Coal mining projects previously cleared to […]
Spare a thought for the people of India having to bid against a desperate China to get enough coal.
India’s coal crisis brews as power demand surges, record global prices bite: Times of India
CHENNAI: Indian utilities are scrambling to secure coal supplies as inventories hit critical lows after a surge in power demand from industries and sluggish imports due to record global prices…
Over half of India’s 135 coal-fired plants have fuel stocks of less than three days, government data shows, far short of federal guidelines recommending supplies of at least two weeks.
That is a lot of coal burning:
India is the world’s second largest importer of coal despite having the fourth largest reserves.
“Domestic consumption increased by about 10% in the last two years because of work from home and air conditioning,” a senior Tamil Nadu government official told Reuters.
Remember when coal was a stranded asset?
Australian coal prices
9.9 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
Click to Enlarge | Map by Planemad
Something amazing has happened in Uttar Pradesh.
At the end of April in Uttar Pradesh, every day 35,000 people were catching Covid and 350 people were dying. With a population of 240 million people living in high density conditions, and with only 5% vaccinated, all the odds were against it.
This week across the whole state there were only 199 active cases in toto and a trickle of new daily cases.
Ponder that Utter Pradesh has about two thirds of the population of the USA and they’re living in a high density environment with a GDP of about $1,000 per capita, which is one sixtieth as much as the average American. To add some perspective, it was only three years ago that the government finally connected everyone up to electricity.
The richest nations in the world are failing.
33 districts in Uttar Pradesh are now Covid-free
Hindustan Times Sept 10th, 2021
There are no active cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in 33 districts of Uttar Pradesh, the state government informed on Friday. About 67 districts have not reported a single new case of the viral […]
The good news is that there is a way out of the new mutant load. The bad news is the Swamp is in the way.
India’s caseload has continued to shrink since we last looked at it. Which is great news, but instead of endorsing the approach that worked, the health ministry is now writing to doctors telling them not to use Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.
Indeed the new recommendations even go so far as to say that zinc and multivitamins are out too. Even zinc?
Ponder that Ivermectin is so powerful it even destroys multivitamins.
Is the day coming when we see antivirals suddenly accepted like the Wuhan Lab theory was? Lives depend on it, but vast piles of money do too. The medical censorship swamp is well equipped, and I suspect, has years of experience. There are so many anti-viral medicines, they’ve been around for years and all the financial incentives not to use cheap out-of-patent drugs have always been there.
Here are the graphs of infections in some states of India:
…
So who leaned on the Indian officials? Who knows?
Ivermectin, Doxycycline Dropped From List of COVID-19 Drugs by Health Ministry
New Delhi: […]
Next time someone tells you how extreme the climate is today remind them that five million people died in a drought in 1896 in India. That was the same year a brutally hot summer in Australia caused 400 deaths and people fled the inland heat on emergency trains. Somewhere between 1 and 5 million people died a few years later in the next drought — the same time as Australia’s “Federation drought”.
Spot the effect of CO2 in 150 years of rainfall of India:
Average rainfall anomalies in India from 1850 – 2016 from IMD (black) and GISS (red). | Click to read the official caption.
Famine deaths have largely been eliminated in India, mostly thanks to better transport and organisation, higher yields (thanks to fertilizer and CO2) and irrigation. Droughts still happen but in a population that has grown from 250 million in 1880 to a billion in 2000 the extraordinary thing is that more people starved of famine when the population was only a quarter of the size and CO2 levels were “perfecto”.
Weakened people died of cholera and malaria, and bubonic plague too. Death rates to these diseases often doubled or tripled.
Famine, India, 1896.
[…]
Australia is so irrelevant. India is cancelling fifty times as many nuclear power plants as Australians ever dreamed of building.
Let’s build another million wind farms.
If we abandoned the country and talked our Kiwi and Canadian friends into moving to Mars with us, we could not make up the carbon credits this decision just vaporized.
Energy Post – thanks to GWPF.
The Financial Express, one of India’s major newspapers, reports that the Narendra Modi government, which had set an ambitious 63,000 MW nuclear power capacity addition target by the year 2031-32, has cut it to 22,480 MW, or by roughly two-thirds.
The drastic reduction in planned construction of new reactors will diminish India’s plans to rely on nuclear energy from 25% of electrical generation to about 8-10%. The balance of new power requirements will likely be met by use of India’s enormous coal deposits.
Please tell us again how coal is a stranded asset?
The country accounts for eight percent of world’s total coal consumption. About two-thirds of India’s electricity generation comes from coal.
India holds the fifth biggest coal reserves in the world. The country’s proved coal reserves are […]
How often do you clean your solar panels? Spare a thought for the poor sods in the Middle East, India and China, where migratory dust coats solar panels and hangs around in the air, blocking incoming sunlight. Researchers in India who cleaned their panels every few weeks and discovered that they got a 50% jump in efficiency each time. If the cleanings happened every two months, the total losses were 25 to 35 percent.
The article very much blames human pollution for half the capacity loss, but in the detail, the press release admits that 92% of the dust on each panel was natural. Apparently human made particles are smaller and stickier which makes the 8% human-emitted-dust equivalent to the 92% of other dust.
Either way, real pollution and natural dust will slow the clean-green-energy future in India and China until we get auto-cleaning panels or roof slaves. Unfortunately, cleaning panels also risks damaging them, so the price of solar power really needs to include the cost of windscreen-wipers/slaves, electricity losses, damage to panels, and damage to the panel cleaners too.
But solar panels will definitely power all the other parts of the world that are near enough to the […]
In the last day in the media, India is going to use coal as its backbone energy for the next thirty years, is buying coal mines all around the world, and will double production by 2020 to a massive 1,500 million tons per annum. At the same time India is meetings its climate goals early, and is likely to reduce emissions by 2 – 3 billion tons by 2030.
They can’t all be true:
Coal to be India’s energy mainstay for next 30 years: policy paper
–Economic Times, May 16th
China, India dominate coal ownership as some shun climate risks: report
— Reuters, May 15th
Coal Decline In China & India Likely To Reduce Emissions Growth By 2-3 Billion Tonnes By 2030
— Cleantechnica, May 16th
China, India to Reach Climate Goals Years Early, as U.S. Likely to Fall Far Short -InsideClimateNews, May 16th The top two headlines are backed by big numbers: India is the worlds third largest coal producer, and coal powers 60% of India’s energy needs. But the poor investors or readers of industry rags might think India’s coal use is falling. Read the fine print. Lessons in spin: It’s all in how […]
Good news. India plans to add more fertilizer to the global air which will help feed the world. There is no charge.
India will become the world’s number 2 miner of coal by 2020, overtaking the US. There are plans to ramp up from mining 634 million tons to 1.5 billion metric tons by 2020. That’s only 3 years away. China’s total coal use doesn’t even fit on this graph. As best as anyone can guess, China uses 3.7 billion ton each year.
How’s that ground breaking, world leading Paris agreement going?
…
Australia is the worlds largest coal exporter but our total exports of coal in 2014/15 were a tiny 393Mt (of both thermal and metallurgical coal). I’ve marked that in blue on the graph. We are only a large exporter because everyone else keeps the coal for their own use.
More mining of India’s coal, Fills another significant role, That of plant-food increase, By CO2 release, Which should really be all mankind’s goal.
— Ruairi
h/t to GWPF
9.8 out of 10 based on 51 ratings
Look who “signed up” to the Cabaret called the Paris Agreement?
…
India is doubling its coal use by 2020 and tripling its emissions by 2030. That’s what “going green” means.
India has ratified the weakest kind of non-reduction, just a promise it will try to “cut emissions intensity“. That big goal is to increase its carbon emissions by slightly less than the rate its population is growing at. An achievement most countries do just by being there. It’s the default condition as economies develop. Instead of reducing emissions, India is set to increase its total emissions threefold by 2030. Ratify that, eh?
Though even that pitifully weak anti-goal is not enforceable. Nearly everything in the Paris deal is optional, voluntary, and written as a should, not a shall. After ten months of delays and frivolous ambit claims like trying to get entry to the nuclear club (and access to more uranium), India has finally signed up for Paris anyway. Which is signing nothing much — all India has agreed to is to submit a new goal for itself every five years, and do a stocktake. It’s that banal.
As I’ve said before, there are so many reasons […]
India wants to be in the Nuclear Club — that’s the bargaining chip for signing the Paris agreement.
India won’t ratify the Paris agreement unless it gets membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) a club that was, as it happens, set up in 1974 when a naughty India set off a nuclear test. But China is completely against India earning its NSG badge. So the big two population elephants on Earth and the monster carbon emitters are not so concerned about the future of Earth that they are going to put other rivalries aside. Priorities, indeed.
Pretty much every nation on Earth has signed up for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – except for India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. In the NPT club there are five countries rated in the Platinum Frequent Flyer Bomb Class and the rest agree not to develop nuclear bombs but are (maybe) allowed to use nuclear power. Most of the few non-signers, like India, probably have bombs, but not the “license” for global bomb club membership. Now, China helps proliferate weapons in North Korea and Pakistan so it’s a tad rich that it claims to be afraid the NPT will fall apart if […]
Indian PM, Modi, has shaken hands and said nice phrases but India isn’t going to commit to Paris until they are ready (if ever). That’s a bit of a blow for the Paris agreement which has only 17 signatories of the 55 countries it needs. For the Paris agreement to come into effect it is also supposed to include countries that produce 55% of global emissions. Thanks to the GWPF for compiling some of the stories here.
There are two versions of reality out there in media-land. Some Media spins it as “success”:
India to work towards Paris climate pact
India-US Joint Statement- Climate: In halfway meeting, both nations come a long way
India Aims To Join Paris Climate Change Agreement This Year
And somewhere out there will be poor sods who aren’t paying attention, and think that India might actually reduce emissions. But instead of megatons of carbon, they’ll be getting a “jolt of momentum”. Did you feel it? Me neither.
WASHINGTON — India has agreed to work towards joining the Paris Agreement on climate change this year, India and the United States said on Tuesday, giving a jolt of […]
A bike used to transport coal for domestic use in China.
The death tally: Real pollution kills 5 million people annually, CO2 saves 500 million with extra crops.
The problem: The poor lack cheap clean electricity.
The groupthink solution: Restrict coal consumption, reduce “emissions” (and make electricity more more expensive).
What do countries with low air pollution do? They burn coal. (75% of Australian electricity comes from coal.)
What do people who care about the poor do: A) Copy success, or B) Start a carbon market?
Some people are conflating issues here.
New research shows that more than 5.5 million people die prematurely every year due to household and outdoor air pollution. More than half of deaths occur in two of the world’s fastest growing economies, China and India.
Power plants, industrial manufacturing, vehicle exhaust and burning coal and wood all release small particles into the air that are dangerous to a person’s health. New research, presented today at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), found that despite efforts to limit future emissions, the number of premature deaths linked to air pollution will climb over the […]
India organised a little shindig for the last couple of days with like minded developing countries (called LMDCs), like China, and announced they did not want any obligatory stuff from the UN about cutting carbon emissions.
I quite like the Indian environment minister’s way of phrasing it:
“All countries have decided to take action, but that action is voluntary and nationally determined, not internationally determined,” India’s environment and forests minister Prakash Javadekar said addressing the negotiators this afternoon.
“Paris can become a festival if the world accepts this scenario – all countries take action, whatever is possible with their resources,” Javadekar said.
“If we welcome everybody’s nationally-determined actions, without criticising each other and without entering into a blame game, Paris will be successful.”
But they do want more money:
The LMDCs have also asked the developed countries to provide “additional, predictable, and sustainable climate finance” to help developing countries enhance their climate actions to cover the period up to 2020 and beyond.
I think this translates to: We’re very committed. We’ll do a lot. Don’t check up on us, just pay us.
Spot the UN double speak
The plain speaking Indian […]
What the Nanny-State Goddess Giveth…
The intermittent power of wind towers plays havoc with electricity grids. Power black outs in India are so bad, they cut off the supply to 600 million or so people for two days last year. To make the grid more stable, an official somewhere decided it would help to have at least one day’s warning of how much electricity will flow from those towers. (Why not two days I say?)
“A directive took effect this week ordering wind farms with a capacity of 10 megawatts or more to forecast their generation in 15-minute blocks for the following day. “
To put some perspective on this, here is what 7000 wind turbines across Northern Europe (between the North sea, the Baltic Sea and the Austrian-Swiss border) produced in 2004. You can admire the stable predictable output that comes from averaging so many turbines over such a large area. Right?
Percentage of peak grid power supplied by 7000 wind turbines in Northern Europe in 2004
9.2 out of 10 based on 84 ratings […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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