India Should Diversify Its Energy Sources

Photo by Pok Rie: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-metal-current-posts-157827/

 

India is the third highest consumer of energy after China and the United States consuming 36.44 exajoules to 159.39 exajoules and 95.91 exajoules consumed by the latter respectively.[1] Securing the growing energy needs of this vast land is of prime importance if India is to reach its desired position amongst the top few nations of the world, as befits its size, history and aspirations. This is challenging in the best of times, but especially in the new global scenario which is seeing the rapid melting down of old certainties.

With the US retreating into itself and no longer desiring to be the global guarantor of the painstakingly created global world order and the emergence of a belligerent and expansionist China hell-bent on imposing its own version of a global world order dominated by them, India has its task cut out in charting an economic and foreign policy that best suits its interests. Diversifying its energy sources has to be at the top of its priorities.

India at present imports 85% of its oil, largely from the Middle East and Russia-regions that are fraught with geo-political tensions, including ongoing wars. That India is not immune from strife that afflicts other regions is clear from the West’s attempts to stop India from buying Russian oil and more recently the attack on a vessel off the coast of the Indian state of Gujarat carrying crude oil to India.

India needs to take a cue from the United States which is no longer an importer of oil and is totally energy independent, thanks in no small measure to the shale revolution witnessed by the country. As a matter of fact, the US is now a net oil exporter. While replicating that might seem like a tall order, nothing is impossible if one thinks through a plan that becomes a national priority. India was an importer of food grain in the 1960s and didn’t grow enough to meet the requirements of its people. All of that changed with the Green Revolution and today India is a food surplus nation that exports grain-a far cry from the days it had to receive grain in the shape of aid.

 

It is time that the nation made energy self-sufficiency a national priority. The first step in such a mission would be to diversify the sources of energy. The Indian government for its part has launched an ambitious energy security strategy which involves substantially increasing the use of petrol blended with ethanol, looking at alternative sources of energy, striving for a gas-based economy and promoting the use of green hydrogen.[2]

 

There is some potential of India exploiting its shale resources to obtain oil, but the activity should be carried out with due caution after taking into account ant environmental concerns that might arise on account of it. Solar energy on the other hand is as clean a source of energy as it possibly can get. Besides, India gets a lot of sun, unlike many other countries in the Northern Hemisphere that do not. According to the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE), India boasts a solar energy potential of 748 GW, if one were to assume 3% of waste land could be utilized for installing Solar PV modules.[3] The other important source of clean renewable energy has a lot going for it too. India already ranks fourth after China, the United States and Germany in terms of installed wind capacity at 42.8 GW (on-shore) as of April of 2023. Furthermore, the National Institute of Wind Energy has estimated that India has a wind power potential of around 695.5 GW at 120 metres above ground level and 1164 GW metres above ground level.[4]

As for green hydrogen, it may not be a very viable source of energy at present owing to its high cost of production at $3.6 to $5.8 a kg, bringing it down to between $1 to $2 by the end of the decade will not only make it the most affordable source of energy in the world but also make it possible for India to export it.[5] Another source of natural perennial energy in the country is geothermal energy. According to the records of the Geological Survey of India, there are some 340 hot water springs in India. All in all, one can look at the potential of generating 10600 MW of energy using this source of energy.[6]

The future energy map of India should be a diverse and self-reliant one that provides that nation with the wherewithal to stand on its own and char its destiny unaffected by geopolitical tailwinds and headwinds. This is something that should be looked at in a holistic and long-term manner using the best minds and most cutting-edge technology to achieve. Once done, the nation will inexorably reach its destiny. Right there at the top, not as an expansionist hegemonic power, but as a self-reliant gentl

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[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263455/primary-energy-consumption-of-selected-countries/#:~:text=China%20is%20the%20largest%20consumer,such%20as%20oil%20and%20coal.

[2] https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1889967#:~:text=Petroleum%20%26%20Natural%20Gas-,India's%204%2Dplank%20energy%20security%20strategy%20is%20based%20on%20diversifying,by%202025%3A%20Hardeep%20Singh%20Puri.

[3] https://www.mondragon-assembly.com/?taxonomy=&term=noticias

[4] https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/india-wind-energy-potential#:~:text=Wind%20resource%20assessment%20by%20the,ground%20level%20across%20the%20nation.

[5] https://www.forbesindia.com/article/innovation/green-hydrogen-can-help-india-meet-its-netzero-ambitions-how-long-before-a-real-impact-is-seen/87937/1

[6] https://prepp.in/news/e-492-geothermal-energy-in-india---geography-notes

India should become an energy-independent nation

                                    Photo by Narcisa Aciko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-wind-turbines-lot-1292464/

We live in a world that has become dangerously fraught with messy wars and conflicts in different parts of the world threatening to jeopardise a global order that had largely ensured peace in large parts of the globe in the decades since the end of the Second World War. In fact, the end of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union and its allies had raised the hopes of a permanent peace finally descending on most parts of our planet.

Alas, that was not to be as the events over the past two or three decades have shown us. It was the US that was the moving force behind the global order that ushered in peace, trade and unprecedented prosperity in more parts of the world than had ever been the case in the long history of mankind. The end of the Cold War led to the US losing interest in becoming the global guarantor of peace and security. Its involvement in the Middle East via the two Gulf Wars and Afghanistan was on account of the US needing to respond to the 9/11 terrorist attacks came to an end as soon as its strategic objectives were achieved.

The US today is more inward-looking than it was before its forced entry into the Second World War and focused mainly on securing the interests of its own people. The events in Ukraine and Israel may have forced it to engage more deeply with NATO and the Middle East for now, but it is not a long-term area of interest for it. The Americans are more deeply concerned with stymying the threat emerging from an increasingly aggressive and belligerent China that seeks to topple the US from its perch at the top-economically and militarily. For that, it has decided to ally with countries like India, Australia and Japan that lie in the Indo-Pacific region to contain the dragon and ensure that it does not flap its wings around the world the way it wants to.

This has more to do with ensuring that nothing threatens the US's preeminent position in the world and that it continues to be a hugely wealthy and powerful nation capable of exercising its writ around the world. That suits the Indo-Pacific nations as well as most of the world since it is a liberal democracy that offers a better way of doing things than the draconian and repressive way followed by totalitarian and despotic China.

The biggest advantage that the US has over most parts of the world is that it is totally self-sufficient when it comes to food and energy. That is something that the largest democracy in the world India could learn from the oldest continuous democracy in the world-the USA. It has already to its huge credit (considering it is the most populous country in the world) achieved self-sufficiency in the former. It is in becoming an energy-independent nation that India will find its true destiny.

The nation currently imports 84% of its crude oil requirements, leaving the economy susceptible to inflationary pressures on account of price and supply fluctuation in international energy markets.[1] The Economic Survey which was released some time back laid out an ambitious plan for making India energy-independent by 2047 and it hasn't come a day moment too soon in a nation of 140 billion people with gargantuan energy needs. As a matter of fact, a study released by the US Department of Energy's National Berkeley Lab came out with a report that India could achieve energy independence by 2047 with the help of clean technology.[2]

This may seem like a tall order but is eminently doable considering that most of the energy infrastructure required to meet its burgeoning energy needs is still to be built. There is an almost two-decade window of time to achieve this much-required and desired transition from fossil fuels to clean and environmentally friendly sources of energy. Doing so will enormously benefit India- economically, environmentally and strategically. It would be in a position of strength largely unrivalled in the world

 

 

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[1] https://groww.in/blog/where-does-india-get-its-oil-supply

[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/the-write-wing/indias-energy-independence-by-2047-a-certainty/

 

Time for Fortress India

Photo by Frans van Heerden: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-castle-under-clouds-1022698/

The world faces an epochal change in the way that the post Second World War global order, put in place by the United States and its allies is getting replaced by one in which nations are being increasingly guided by narrow self-interest and forging strictly transactional relations with other nations, in place of strategic alliances. The Americans who propped up the now fast disappearing global order that put a premium on international trade and stability are increasingly playing a diminishing role in ensuring that there is order and respect for rules and conventions in different parts of the globe. The troops pull-out in Afghanistan is, just a culmination of their lack of interest in what goes on in other parts of their world as long as the US and its people get by just fine.

Their sole long term now objective is to ensure that a rising belligerent China does not replace the hitherto American led global world order with a Chinese led one-not because of American hubris, but because a rising threat would prove to be detrimental to their long term national security threat. They may have been temporarily forced to play a prominent global role again thanks to the happenings in Ukraine and Israel, but their primary focus is China and the Indo-Pacific region.

That explains their burgeoning strategic relationship with India which they want to build up as a strategic bulwark against Chinese expansionism. This suits India as well, who have the misfortune of having to be sandwiched between two sworn enemies on its western and eastern flanks. While Pakistan with its collapsing and imploding economy can be dealt with by India quite easily, it is China with its much larger economy and expanding defense forces that shows every intention of using force to seize Indian territory that requires India to shore up its defense capabilities like never before .

It is, therefore, in India’s interest to join forces with the United States and its allies in trying to contain China.  The unreliability of a steady supply of weapons from a failing Russia has also necessitated that India buy more and more arms from the West, which it is doing. Its entering into the QUAD alliance which envisages close strategic relations with the US, Australia and Japan is also a step in the right direction. While India’s growing ties with the West in the economic, cultural and strategic spheres are indeed very welcome and in its national interest, one should never lose sight of the fact that the new found bonhomie is on account of strategic reasons and not on account of any special affinity the West has for India.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. India has a lot going for it. It has the world’s largest population, most of which is young and able to work unlike the rapidly declining and fast aging population of China. Its economy which is already the fifth largest in the world is going to hit $5 trillion by 2027 with India becoming the third largest market in the world, on account of it being the fastest growing large economy on Earth.

India is self-sufficient in food in an era where the very real specter of global food shortage is spooking half the world (including China). That counts for a lot in a world threatened by climate change, global pandemics and internecine warfare in different parts of the world. In the days ahead, the world will need India more than it needs the world. Look at the way the British are pursuing India to sign a trade deal with them. People of Indian origin are working and doing well for themselves in all parts of the world, thanks to their great work ethic and the drive to excel giving India an increasing say in world affairs. India as a nation is not averse to projecting power overseas when required. Look at the way it organized the rescue of Indians and indeed citizens of other countries in conflict zones like Ukraine and Israel.

While India should engage with the world, where its interests are involved, it should do so strictly on a transactional basis like the US does. Ever since the latter have acquired energy security, they have largely lost interest in the Middle East, withdrawing from Iraq at the first opportunity. Once they had Bin Laden, they lost interest in Afghanistan and withdrew. Today they are engaged in an epic mission of degrading China’s manufacturing capabilities and ridding the world of over reliance on the Chinese dominated global supply chains, by shifting manufacturing to other countries and increasingly back to the US or its neighbouring nations on the American continents like Mexico.

 

Long before they and their sworn allies lose interest in India strategically, India should like the US become a self-contained world in itself where it manufactures all or most of its defense equipment itself, and grows its economy by catering to its large domestic market, apart from its exports. That will ensure, it does not have to fear being left high and dry by any other nation it took to be its lifeline. India with its long experience in maintaining a neutral nonaligned position on world affairs from the days of the Nonaligned Movement is well positioned to do so.

Besides, the world is increasingly going to need India with its large market, its technological prowess, its military might capable of force projection beyond the borders if required, its ability to grow enough food to not just feed a billion and a half people but for export to other nations as well. Its fortuitous geographical position where all the major sea lanes pass below it gives it a vantage position to not just protect its maritime interests, but also ensure that nothing detrimental to its interests happens in the region.

Fortress India can not only secure the future of its citizens for perpetuity, but also become a force for global good, and a template of self-reliant progress that others can emulate.

 

Is the cost of living crisis in the West indicative of something serious?

 

                                          Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grey-metal-case-of-hundred-dollar-bills-164652/

The Western nations with their high standards of living have been both a cause of envy and a beacon of hope for people living in the countries of the third world. The incredible material progress achieved by leading Western nations like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and even Australia, (which is not in the Western hemisphere, but is very much a Western nation) exhibited a template of what an ideal life could be. Well-fed and well-educated people living in fabulous houses, earning extremely well and living life to the fullest in every sense of the word. From driving expensive cars to holidaying at exotic locations, everything pointed to a very happy existence indeed. Add to that the fact these countries were by and large safe, followed a rules-based order and provided top-rate healthcare added to the allure of living there.

Things seem to have changed dramatically in the last few years, especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. One began to hear of job layoffs, businesses going under and a rising cost of living crisis that threatened to forever change the paradigm of the "beautiful Western" lifestyle. From education becoming unaffordable with the accompanying student debt crisis and the inability of young people to buy homes and the rising food and energy crisis, the much-vaunted Western way of life seems to have become very shaky indeed. So what is going on? Is the cost of living crisis in the West indicative of something really serious?

Everybody is impacted

 

The fact of the matter is that the food and energy price rise has impacted everybody-rich and poor nations alike. In fact, tens of millions of people around the world run the risk of relapsing into poverty because of that.  The supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic has been further compounded by the war in Ukraine leading to intense inflationary pressures in nations across the world. The impact of this has been devastating in much of the underdeveloped world with people across Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (with the exception of India)suffering from immense economic deprivation. Very uncharacteristically many people in the developed nation (a quarter of the people by some estimates) are experiencing economic distress. Shockingly many people in the UK, a major G7 nation can’t afford food on a daily basis. With food and energy bills eating into most of their earnings, a large number of people are in real dire straits.

End of Four Centuries of Western Economic Dominance in Sight?

 

The West's economic dominance which started with the rise of European colonialism and reached its zenith under the United States in the present times. This led to unprecedented global growth, especially after the Second World War, raising the standards of living of not just their Western allies, but many other parts of the world. This unprecedented and unparalleled economic growth definitely seems to be now decelerating, if not stalling altogether. The steady decline in the living standards of the American middle class and that of other leading nations of the Western world has led these countries to gradually withdraw from an openly global trade regime to watch out for their individual national interest above everything else.

The economic rise of China and its striving to dislodge the United States from its preeminent position in global affairs has led to a realignment of geo-political strategies with the US according more importance to its Indo-Pacific allies like India and Japan than to its traditional ones in Europe (though the war in Ukraine has temporarily enhanced focus in that theatre.) China on its part is facing its own economic demons with a rapidly declining economy matched by its falling population and the rise in the mean age of its population.

The world is in a state of economic flux, with no clear sign of what the new economic order will look like in an era of the disintegration of a familiar way of doing things and the need to pivot to a green and environmentally friendly way of growing the world economy against the backdrop of a climate catastrophe. The cost of living crisis in the West or elsewhere may or may not be a foretaste of things to come, but there certainly is not a lot of clarity about what lies ahead.

India quietly elbowing out China on the world stage

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There was a time in the very recent past when the world looked nervously as the Chinese economy surged and grew to the number 2 spot in world rankings. The veritable manufacturing headquarters of the world, as China’s wealth and profile grew, so did its geo-political ambitions. Its ambitious global infrastructure project Belt and Road dazzled the world and drew support from nations across the continents who lined up to be part of the project that seemed to show the path to a whole new golden age of economic growth.

India was one of the few countries in the world that refused to toe the Chinese line and made it a point to object to the very idea of the grandiose infrastructure project, which it saw as nothing more than a land-grabbing exercise on a global scale combined with trapping struggling nations in a pernicious debt cycle. The incredible growth of the Chinese economy over the past two decades occurred because the Americans had turned an indulgent eye to the former slowly and inexorably becoming a global manufacturing hub and the fulcrum of the global supply chain.

With success came hubris and China under its new dictatorial president Xi Jinping embarked on a revisionist path that involved making outlandish territorial claims vis-à-vis its neighbours and behaving roguishly with any nation that didn’t agree with their point of view. A case in point is the way they threatened the Australians with punitive trade tariffs on their imports after the latter called for an enquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

From its perennial fixation with repossessing Taiwan, and claiming most of the South China Sea as its territorial waters to starting an armed skirmish with India in the high Himalayas to justify its illegal attempts at consistent land grabbing and its trying to browbeat Philippines and Vietnam, China has been flexing its muscles at just about anybody it thinks doesn’t show it the respect due to a great power that China was always meant to be.

Unfortunately for China and its great delusions of grandeur, its great economy is sputtering to a halt. Its population is ageing leading to an inevitable economic decline and the West has joined hands with partners like India to slowly extricate everyone from having to rely on China to keep the global supply chain healthy. Moreover, with the flow of cutting-edge technology and investment from the West to China drying up, they are looking at very bad times ahead indeed. Growth has plummeted and unemployment has risen among a very highly aspirational youth leading to social unrest.

India on its part has quietly gone about building its economy in a big way by investing heavily in infrastructure and forging close economic ties with nations ranging from the US, and the European region to the Middle East and Japan. Strategically too, India has been shoring up its military capability by purchasing cutting-edge aircraft, building infrastructure in the Himalayas, making its own aircraft carrier and forging strategic alliances with a host of nations. The most important one is the four-nation QUAD comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia.

In its immediate neighbourhood, India has helped an economically devastated Sri Lanka by extending credit lines to them that no other nation in the world including China would do. It has largely warm and friction-free relations with all its immediate neighbours, apart from China and Pakistan. India is also enhancing its naval presence in the Indian Ocean knowing fully well that it can choke China of food and fuel supplies at will, as all the important sea lanes to China from the West pass under the Indian peninsula. In a direct blow to the much vaunted and faltering Belt and Road initiative, the new economic corridor from India to Europe, The India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) which was announced at the recently concluded G20 summit will prove to be a catalyst for stimulating close economic ties between Asia, the Arabian Gulf and Europe- a potential game changer, if there was any.

By ensuring that the African Union became a full member of the G-20, India has done more for the continent than China with its tall promises and dangerous policy of making supplicants of nations it purports to help. Moreover, the world is not suspicious of India’s motives, the way it is of China’s. Unlike the single-party ruled autocracy with an opaque way of conducting its affairs, India is a vibrant democracy that follows the rule of law. The growth of India will be good for the world as India is a force for good. China is no longer the growth engine of the world, which is a good thing too, for its growth can become a cause of danger to the world and even its own people.

Like the proverbial race between the hare and the tortoise, India may have been late in picking up speed, but it is getting there and will one day forge ahead. Look at the way the whole world including Russia and even China arrived at a consensus on the G20 New Delhi declaration, something that the whole world thought was impossible, thanks to India’s tireless efforts. India is quietly, but inexorably elbowing out China on the world stage. The latter will likely be busy staving out economic crises, social unrest and food shortages in the years ahead. It may not be that apparent yet, but the next few decades are India’s.