Greenpeace's India 2050 Energy Scenario

Greenpeace has launched its report, 'Energy (R)evolution: A sustainable Energy Outlook for India' in New Delhi yesterday, which has some pretty sensible solutions for India to cut the pollution and keep the growth into the year 2050.

The report outlines the path and policy for India to take to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 4% by 2050, instead of a nearly 400% increase going by current standards. This makes more sense seen in the context that the report on India is a part of the Global Energy Outlook report which aims at a global reduction of CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050.

The report suggests a two-pronged approach to tackle pollution. On the one hand it stresses on increasing the contribution of renewables in the production of electricity, "from the current 4% to 10% by 2010, 20% by 2020 and 65% by 2050". The other focus area is energy efficiency, which should restrict primary energy demand increase from 27,000 Pita Joules in 2003 to just 37,000 PJ/a in 2050, instead of 72,000 PJ/a which would be the demand if no action was taken.

Total electricity production will rise from the current 120GW to 88GW. Of the total mix 25% will be produced from solar PV, 20% from wind, 11% hydro and 6% from biomass. On hydro, the stress is on small, mini and micro hydroelectric projects, which are environmentally friendly and will make up 60% of the hydro-electricity produced. Similarly biomass should not affect food produce and should be produced only from waste.