Notes from India (10) - A tale of two energy policies
The following Bloomberg piece, 22 December 2023, is about India ramping up coal power electricity production faster than previous forecasts.
India Plans to Keep Adding Coal Power Capacity as Demand Surges - Bloomberg
Excerpted from the Bloomberg piece:
India, one of the world’s top carbon emitters, has about 27 gigawatts of coal-based power plants under construction and another 24 gigawatts capacity is in pre-construction stages, according to Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh.
Coal power accounts for about three-quarters of India’s power production and is expected to generate more than half of India’s electricity by the end of the decade, according to the power ministry’s Central Electricity Authority.
Because of India's rapid growth, 5% GDP growth rate, coal power electricity production will still be higher by the end of the decade than it is today (despite coal's reducing percentage of total power production).
In contrast, the US government mandates the elimination of US coal fired electrical power all together which will lead to higher electricity prices and rationing of electric power in the US.
The Biden EPA’s Plan to Ration Electricity - WSJ
Excerpted from the WSJ piece:
All of this will hit while demand for power is surging amid new manufacturing needs and an artificial intelligence boom. Texas’s grid operator this week raised its forecast for demand growth for 2030 by 40,000 megawatts compared to last year’s forecast. That’s about seven times the power that New York City uses at any given time.
Texas power demand will nearly double over the next six years owing to data centers, manufacturing plants, crypto mining and the electrification of oil and gas equipment. When temperatures in Texas recently climbed into the 80s, the grid operator told power plants not to shut down for maintenance. Americans around the country are increasingly being told to raise their thermostats during the summer and avoid running appliances to prevent blackouts.
By the way, EPA plans to unveil soon another rule to reduce CO2 emissions from existing gas-fired plants, so some of them may also have to shut down. Meantime, China has added about 200 gigawatts of coal power over the last five years—about as much as the entire U.S. coal fleet. The Biden fossil-fuel onslaught will have no effect on global temperatures.
But it will raise electricity prices no matter what EPA says. Electric rates are already soaring amid the government force-fed green transition, https://www.wsj.com/articles/electricity-prices-biden-green-energy-labor-department-2b4ea2cb?mod=article_inline especially in states like California, New York and New Jersey that have done the most to punish fossil fuels.
Higher electricity prices are one thing, but an energy shortage is also a threat to national security. Still, the American public, more concerned with DJT's mercurial traits than their hope for a vibrant economic future, blindly assents to America's ongoing managed decline.
Apropos my home state of Utah. Gary Hoogeveen, CEO Rocky Mountain Power, in 2021, affirmed to our coffee group, LSDM, that Utah was on track to phase out its coal power plants by 2032. Coal power would be replaced by a medley of natural gas, solar, nuclear and wind. Hoogeveen affirmed that this transition could be made without an increase in per kilowatt hour electricity cost to Utahns who enjoyed the lowest cost of electricity in the US at nine cents per kilowatt hour. Hoogeveen returned to LSDM in late 2023 to hedge on his 2021 commitment. The EPA, he informed, was pushing to have Utah shut down its coal plants two years ahead of schedule, by 2030. Power replacement substitutes would not be online in 2030 therefore Utah, at substantial increased cost, would have to import power.
Where aspirational India appropriately ramps up its coal plant electricity production to meet ever growing needs for power, self-hating America willingly commits slow motion energy seppuku based on highly questionable scientific rationale. One of the reasons I could never be a democrat is their wholesale rejection of science on multiple fronts.