How the goal of energy security can be achieved in India?
Whether it is an individual or a country, energy is given the utmost priority. In a developing country like India, energy security is a must accomplishing goal. Complete development of the nation is dependent on energy security. The governments that were elected by the people so far devised a lot of plans to accomplish this goal of energy security. But the actual difficulty is not in the devising of policies, but in its implementation.
When we consider the long run, is our present energy system secure? The answer is no. Then are there any policies to make it secure in the coming days? For this the answer is yes. But from my point of view it's not sufficient.
When we are talking about energy security, we must also take into account of the population without electricity. To be honest, there are lots of villages that are not meeting its electricity needs. So what are the approaches that can be adopted to accomplish the goal of energy security ?
India is mostly (around 60-70%) dependent on conventional sources of energy. It includes thermal power plants. Since most of the available coal is of low calorific value, we are also importing coal. The other sources of energy include hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas etc. In a country like India, where solar power is abundant, so is wind energy that can be tapped in large amount in some parts of our country. So are we done with? No ! We also have a large amount of wastes that can be utilised to extract energy from the hydrocarbons like methane. This can also be helpful in adopting waste management and supports the clean India campaign to some extent.
So how to reduce the dependency on conventional sources and also ensure energy security? The simple answer is becoming self-sufficient. This can be attained through solar and hydrocarbon energy. Depending much on wind energy is highly unstable as it involves the prediction of wind speed, direction etc. Apart from this it is less efficient. So when we begin to think as an individual, we can divide the population into rural and urban. In the places where proper infrastructure for electricity is not present we can adopt solar as the main source of energy. Since the initial investment costs are high, the government must bear the expenditure. Besides, the government must also encourage research on solar management system includes panels which must be highly efficient with minimal production cost. Thus, we must become an example to the world. In urban areas, solar rooftop methods can be adopted. Big industries and companies must invest a small percentage of their profit in the solar power generation for their own needs. But for small scale industries and businesses, government should enforce strict laws for solar generation for their need.
Apart from all this we must learn to conserve energy. People aren't aware of the difficulties involved in power generation. They are happy if the electricity is available when they need. People, especially in urban areas, must know the difficulties and must adopt practices to conserve them.
Besides, top lawmakers must realize, framing policies and enacting the bill in the parliament could be an easy job. But the implementation is the difficult part, especially in a nation with the second largest population. We must ensure that all the good results of the policies are reaching the people effectively. It's not only the responsibility of the government. To bring a change, support of people is very important. They just need to conserve electricity and this is not a difficult job. So let us all join together and become self sufficient, thereby achieving the goal of energy security.
- Sudhakaran.K
