Cement, Energy and Environment

\ The alternative way of dealing with the spent fuel is significantly cheaper. In 2007, economist JY Suchitra and I published a paper in International Journal of Global Energy Issues that used the actual expenditures on the Kalpakkam Reprocessing Plant near Chennai to demonstrate that reprocessing of spent fuel in India costs about 25 times what it would cost to directly dispose it. In a subsequent 2011 paper in the same journal, we showed that the use of plutonium to fuel reactors was also not economical. From both an environmental and economic perspective, therefore, reprocessing of spent fuel simply makes no sense. Add to this the risk of potential accidents at reprocessing plants and associated facilities, and it should be clear that even if nuclear power is being expanded , it would be better to stop reprocessing spent fuel. (MV Ramana is with the Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University and the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India) Courtesy: The Economic Times, 23.08.2015 Renewable Energy INDIA'S INVESTMENT THRUST WILL BE TOWARDS RENEWABLE ENERGY: PIYUSH GOYAL India's investments in renewable energy will exceed expenditure on power plants based on fossil fuels, which are globally seen as polluting. Coal , power and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal says the message is loud and clear that the country's investment thrust will be towards renewables. Goyal, who says he is inaccessible to industrialists unless they meet him in a group, also tells in an exclusive interview that his government and the states will ensure that losses of state distribution companies (discoms), which exceed Rs 60,000 crore, will be wiped out completely by 2019. The minister says this will happen without big increases in tariffs and a new tariff policy will give a big boost to renewable energy and encourage waste-to-power plants , which will also help the Swachh Bhar campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Edited excerpts: Some projects don't have coal linkage... Transparency is the hallmark of Prime Minister Modi's government. If you look back in history, we feel linkages were also given on a first come, first served basis. Whoever applied was very often promised more than what CIL (state-run monopoly miner Coal India) could deliver. There has been a kind of stalemate in the entire linkage process for several years. We are trying to bring in transparency in that also. We will, for the nonregulated sector, auction out longer term commitment to supply from Coal · India so everybody has an equal chance to participate. For power, we will give coal linkage to states that need more power and they can bid out. We believe this will bring down cost significantly. Otherwise, when a company gets a linkage, it has the ability to dictate terms. If the discom has linkage then all bidders are on an equal footing. One of the reasons I'm confident of resolving the discoms' problem is that my effort is towards cost reduction and efficiency improvement, not only tariff increase. What is the overall package for discoms? The proposal has three dimensions. One is, what do we do with the past, something I've inherited. We are sorting out what needs to be done for the past. Second, we are working on a three-year plan to bring down aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses to 15% nationally from 27% now. This cannot be brought down in five, 10 or 15 years, the way they used to think in the past. In my view, it has to be done fast. In three, three-and-a-half years I want to bring national losses down to 15%. We have to improve efficiency, create infrastructure; see where energy efficiency can bring down consumption, especially peak consumption. Costs can come down 10% by efficiently managing coal and its output. NTPC's assessment is that its power costs can come down about1 0%. That's the three-year programme in which we hope that other than routine regulatory increases, which the regulator passes, we may not need a very significant increase. The third is for the future, to provide for a hard budget constraint so banks don't lend indiscriminately to discoms and states are conscious they can't allow discoms' losses to accumulate over a long period of time . They become more responsible. Fortunately all states