India’s Blackout Lesson: Coal Failed, Solar Delivered
Of all the headlines around India’s historic blackout none summed up the truth more than the Onion: ”300 million without electricity after restoration of the power grid.” In fact, when asking Indian colleagues about the blackout most acknowledged it as simply par for the course. That’s because India’s over reliance on a centralized grid powered [...]
India’s Coal Crisis Hits Deep Freeze
What began as a social crisis borne of forced evictions, loss of livelihoods, and brutal police repression has quickly evolved into a financial one. In a series of excellent posts (part one here, part two here) my colleague Carl Pope has laid out the economic basis of the problem India now faces. The reality of [...]
Era of Cheap Coal Ends, Solar Age Dawns
The bright lights of Diwali have further exposed the depth and breadth of India’s coal crisis bringing a 21st century reality into painful focus: Geologically speaking coal is abundant, economically speaking cheap coal is not. India may be the first country to face this harsh reality, but it will not be the last. Fortunately, the clean energy sector is [...]
Coal is Cheap? World’s Largest Coal Plants Bankrupted by Skyrocketing Prices
Against the backdrop of India’s struggle against coal a new phase of India’s coal crisis is quietly unfolding. The skyrocketing cost of imported coal is wreaking havoc on the financial solvency of the country’s coal plants. Two of which, Tata Mundra and Krishnapatnam, happen to be some of the world’s largest (at 4 GW each [...]
The Clean Development Mechanism’s Coal Scandal
Coal is the most carbon intensive fuel on earth. So using scarce climate finance to build the world’s largest new coal plants as a tool for reducing carbon emissions may sound like a joke. But with five projects already approved under the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for windfall profits of nearly $1 billion [...]
Mission Critical: Focusing on What Energy Costs Today
A disruptive shift in the world energy economy has rendered the commonly accepted axiom that renewable energy is expensive and fossil fuels are cheap oversimplified and outdated. From soaring coal and oil prices, to rock bottomsolar module prices, the signs are everywhere that what we believe we know about energy costs today requires immediate revision. Most importantly, [...]
What Role for Coal? World Bank Energy Strategy and Energy Access
A little more than a year ago the World Bank’s highly controversial $3.75 Billion loan for one of the world’s largest coal plants – the 4,800 MW Medupi coal plant in South Africa – laid bare the tension surrounding coal and development. Now the World Bank’s draft Energy Strategy, a document that will guide energy [...]