“Every extra Re.1 spent on low-carbon technology is money saved in having to refit later on,” said Les Dangerfield, Deputy Director, British Council, India and Sri Lanka, at the start of a two-day Indo-U.K. workshop held at the Indian Institute of Technology- Madras.

The workshop on low-carbon decentralised power production is examining technologies, including alternatives, as part of Low Carbon Futures, the British Council’s new climate security project.

India still has the space to grow its carbon emissions by 233 per cent before it hits the prescribed 1-million tonne international limit, but it has also some carbon neutral tools at its disposal to make the most of its capacity.

“Today in India, we already have a number of mature, sustainable, affordable and competitive energy systems,” said Hari Sharan, president of the Swiss-based Dasag Engineering Ltd, and chairman, Desi Power, Bangalore. India could save 277 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission by adopting low-carbon technologies such as wind and biomass fuel in locally run centres at no extra cost than that of centralised energy, he said.

Desi power supplied 75 kilowatts of energy to 100 villages through bio-fuels and was training villagers in operating bio-fuel plants at a small profit. Half of the investments came from selling carbon credits back to Europe, he said. This model could be easily scaled up, he reckoned, if the three ministries worked together and invested in public-private partnerships. “The biggest problem is the implementation,” he said.

Climate change

No doubt, the climate change would affect India severely. In a presentation of some of the analysis undertaken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NH Ravindranath, Chairman, Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute or Science, Bangalore, outlined some of the changes Indians could expect: a significant change in the rainfall pattern resulting in a decline in crop yield by 20 per cent by 2040; loss of forests such as those in the Western Ghats by 2080; a rise in surface temperatures by 2.5-4.5 degrees by 2099; and a rise in sea temperatures by 6 degrees and a corresponding rise of sea levels by 4-6 metres by 2099, wiping out many coastal cities and settlements.

With 600,000 rural settlements in India, each using relatively little power but with great variance within the year, the costs of transmission and distribution from the power grid made investments less likely, Professor Ravindranath said. Decentralised renewable energy was not only cleaner energy but more likely to reach the target of India’s development efforts, the rural poor, he indicated. “We have the opportunity to meet local and global needs,” he said. “India cannot sit back.”