India’s Energy Transition in a Carbon-Constrained World and the Role of Nuclear in the Overall Scheme
Recently, India’s premier think tank Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) and IIT Bombay came out with a very interesting and well-researched comprehensive report on ‘India’s Energy Transition in a Carbon Constrained World’. VIF and IIT Bombay formed a joint task force to carry out a comprehensive research to study the critical requirements and implications of India’s energy transition, The report aims to establish the cost-effective ways for reaching net zero by 2070 and assesses economic and financial implications of energy transition while exercising different options to do so.
The VIF-IIT Model of India’s Energy Transition delves deeper into several critical aspects and came out with quite interesting findings and revealing observations:
India will have an energy requirement of 24470 TWh by 2070 to be developed and net zero country.
A nuclear-dominated approach (R05N95) will be the most cost-effective solution at USD 11.2 trillion for reaching the goal of net zero by 2070. A renewable-dominated scenario (R95N05) will be the most expensive option at USD 15.5 trillion. For Business as usual (BAU) in which India will not achieve net zero, the cost of transition will be USD 12.1 trillion.
The LCOE approach is an in adequate approach to compare energy/electricity pricing by different sources. System cost of renewables ges ignored and passed on to Discoms / coal based thermal base plants as of now. Considering system costs, renewables are at least 20% costlier than nuclear / thermal power.
For a renewable dominated energy mix, installed capacity has to be 25000 GW to achieve net zero as against 7000 GW of installed capacity for high nuclear energy mix.
Renewables (Solar/Wind) are highly land intensive source. For large population and high population density country such as India, the surplus land area of 200, 000 Sq km will be just insufficient to go for heavily tilted energy mix towards renewable.
A renewable dominated energy mix will shift India import dependency on China for solar wafers and Lithium for battery system, wherein China exercises near monopoly status over supply chain. It might pose serious energy security challenge for India in the time to come. Hence, nuclear share has to be sufficiently improved in the energy mix in line with other big economies such as the US, France, Russia, the UK, South Korea, Japan etc.
NBP's Head of India, Vinay Khanduri recently had a chat with Ambassador D P Srivastava, Distinguished Fellow from India's Vivekananda International Foundation on India’s Energy Transition in a Carbon-Constrained World and the Role of Nuclear in the Overall Scheme. Ambassador Srivastava was the Indian Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran (2011-15). In the past, he has served as Indian Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Libya and India’s High Commissioner to Malta.
India Nuclear Business Platform 2023
The 4th edition of India Nuclear Business Platform (INBP) will take place in Mumbai this 10-11 October. This industry meeting will feature all they officials and players across the Indian nuclear supply chain. Official event partner is NTPC, India’s largest power producer which is now looking to diversity its portfolio and enter the nuclear sector. More information on this meeting is available here.
