Look no further- This single and comprehensive editorial is all that you need to write a best answer as far as Energy Security is concerned.
Obtaining a secure and adequate supply of a traded commodity, be it food or fuel, is generally a problem prevalent amongst poor people, poor regions or poor nations. With the power to pay the price the rich often find willing suppliers for what they want. The World Energy Assessment (UNDP 1999) report defines energy security as: “the continuous availability of energy in varied forms in sufficient quantities at reasonable prices”. This definition needs to be modified to better reflect our situation in India.
- It is important that energy is supplied to all citizens. When the energy needs of only some citizens are met, it cannot be a sustainable situation.
- It is necessary to provide “lifeline” energy to all citizens irrespective of their paying capacity. Energy up to a certain level is a basic necessity and whether the state supplies it or not, people will procure it in any way possible. If the state does not provide such lifeline energy, environmental degradation can be expected. Lifeline energy consumption for those who cannot afford energy at market price has to be made good through subsidies that, preferably, target the intended beneficiaries directly. Energy security requires that the lifeline energy needs of the Nation are met in full.
- Effective demand, i.e. demand backed by the ability to pay at market determined prices, should be met fully. If it is not, the rich will get what they desire but the poorer classes won’t.
- If demand is not met at competitive prices the competitiveness of the Indian economy would be compromised.
- Safe and convenient energy is desirable as the use of traditional fuels such as wood or dung cakes causes indoor air pollution and leads to an adverse impact on health, particularly that of women and children.
- Energy is required in different forms to meet different needs. Energy in one form cannot be easily substituted by other forms. Often such substitution involves cost or loss in the quality of service. For example, kerosene can replace electricity for lighting but at a cost and a loss in quality of service. Fuel cells or batteries could replace IC engines using petrol or diesel but at a cost.
- Energy should be available at all times. Interruptions in energy availability can impose high costs on the economy and also on human well-being.
- To ensure energy security at all times, shocks and disruptions that can be reasonably expected must be anticipated. Ability to withstand such shocks and disruptions is essential for energy security. However, one cannot guard against all possible shocks at affordable costs. The surety of energy supply cannot be 100 percent. One can ensure supply only within a certain prescribed confidence level.
- The efficiency of extracting fossil fuels in India as well as other mining activities can easily be improved by some 10 per cent. For fossil fuels this would mean a lower level of energy spent per unit of energy extracted.
- Fuel efficiency of Coal Power Plants: The average fuel conversion efficiency of Indian power plants is just about 30.5 percent though the new 500 MW plants have efficiency of 36 per cent. State of the art super critical pulverised fuel fired boilers can reach an efficiency level of 46 per cent depending on plant location. Under Indian conditions an efficiency level of 38-40 per cent should be attainable. Considering our large dependence on coal-based power plants, obtaining this technology for all new power plants should be our first target.
- Another major option is provided by freight traffic. The railways’ goods traffic has increased to 1050 million tonnes in 2014. If the railway carried 70 per cent of the goods traffic today, it would carry 3000 million tonnes of additional traffic. Assuming that all of this goods traffic would have been carried by Railways using diesel, the diesel saved would have been around 5 Mt out of a total consumption of 40 Mt. If all of the goods traffic was carried by Railways using electric traction, the diesel saved would have been around 8 Mt. Thus a significant saving of diesel is possible if Railway operations can be upgraded to win back the haulage lost to road traffic.
- Energy efficiency and demand side management also have a large scope to reduce energy requirement. These include the use of energy efficient appliances and automobiles, hybrid cars, energy efficient buildings, efficient lighting, cogeneration, distributed generation with Combined Heat and Power (CHP) use, energy efficient and well-maintained irrigation pumps, smokeless improved woodstoves, etc.
- In the long-term, promotion of public transport in urban areas can significantly reduce energy consumption particularly the need for imported oil and gas. Some advance actions that can be taken now are as follows-Develop effective and attractive mass transport such as underground, elevated trains, light rail, monorail or dedicated bus lanes in existing metros; For medium size cities, make plans for efficient public transport corridors to serve future population and acquire the right of way. Public transport can then be further developed as the city develops. Development of city infrastructure can be financed by gradually increasing permissible built up area or Floor Space Index (FSI) and auctioning the right to build. Even existing land owners should be required to purchase the additional right to build, if they want to extend their buildings; and congestion charges and parking fees should be levied in city centres to discourage the use of private cars.
- Electrification of railways can replace diesel trains. Of course this calls for investment in electrification of tracks, electric locomotives and electricity generation.
- Wood plantations with a potential of yielding up to 20 tonnes of wood per hectare per year in a sustainable way could significantly expand the domestic energy resource base. Wood can be burned directly or gasified for power generation. This would reduce the need for future gas/coal imports.
- Bio-diesel and Ethanol can substitute diesel and petrol. Bio-diesel becomes particularly attractive when it is derived from inedible oilseeds from trees that need little water and fertiliser and can thus grow without care on wasteland. Ethanol can be obtained from molasses, which may have other economically more paying uses. Ethanol can also be obtained from other starchy crops and from cellulosic plant matter. The competition for using limited land resources and availability of water pose the main challenges to increasing the production of ethanol.
- Use of hybrid vehicles and/or of electric vehicles, cars, scooters and motorbikes can significantly reduce requirements of petrol. This requires development of low weight, high density batteries. An advantage of such vehicles is that individuals can adopt this technology without the development of a supporting fuel supply network as would be required by hydrogen or fuel cell based vehicles.
- If hydrogen can be produced as a byproduct of industry or with locally available energy sources, hydrogen based vehicles could provide an option to reduce dependence on oil imports.
- Coal can be converted into oil as is done in South Africa. The technology is well-developed and in use for years. Sasol is routinely available at filling stations along with petro and diesel in South Africa.
- Enhanced Recovery: Enhanced oil, gas and coal recovery from existing fields is an obvious option. India’s recovery of in-place reserves can improve easily by 5-10 percentage points. Better mine design and the use of technologically advanced mining techniques are valid options. Recovery of oil and gas from abandoned and/or marginal fields may also be taken up. However, the cost of such recovery should be balanced against the total amount of oil or gas that may be recovered from the field.
- In-situ Coal Gasification: Similarly for coalfields, in-situ gasification may permit much higher recovery of coal than can be economically mined by conventional techniques. Technology development for in-situ gasification should be vigorously pursued and entry barriers for gasification removed.
- Coal Bed Methane: Methane is absorbed in coal seams. This Coal Bed Methane (CBM) usually escapes into the atmosphere when coal is mined. Tapping and utilising the CBM as a source of commercial energy has been in vogue in the US and Australia for several years. The estimated potential of CBM in India is in the range of 1400-2600 billion cu. metres (BCM).
- Exploration: Efforts can be stepped up to find new reserves. Recent success by private as well as public sector companies such as Reliance and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Ltd. in finding gas shows the need to attract more players in exploration in the country. Exploration for all energy resources – coal, oil, gas and Uranium – should be stepped up. Offshore wind energy potential should also be mapped.
- Coal to Oil: Rising oil prices in the world market makes conversion of coal to oil economically attractive. Sasol claims that its technology for converting South African coal to liquids is viable if crude oil stays above US$65 per barrel. India should establish the viability of Sasol technology with domestic coal and establish the breakeven price at which coal to liquids would make sense for Indian coal.
- New Domestic Sources: The domestic resource base can also be expanded through developing hitherto poorly developed or new sources of energy. Some of these resources may require R&D to make them economical. Among these are:
- Nuclear Power: With meagre availability of uranium in the country and vast resources of thorium, any long-term nuclear strategy has to be based on thorium. The three stage strategy of development of nuclear power from pressurised heavy water based reactors to fast breeder reactors to Thorium based reactors requires a sustained R&D effort. Success in these efforts could deliver some 2,50,000 MW of nuclear power by 2050 and much more thereafter. Given the limited resources of oil, gas and uranium, solar energy and thorium based nuclear option are the only two sizeable sources (apart from fusion) of energy for the country. Thus, the thorium option must be pursued.
- Gas Hydrates: Very large reserves exist in Indian waters and have the potential to provide vast amount of gas. Technology to exploit these economically in ecologically safe ways is yet to be developed. However, the potential size of the resource makes it critical to vigorously pursue R&D.
- Wind: The potential for onshore wind power has been assessed to be 45,000 MW. The Wind Energy Society of India claims it to be as high as 65,000 MW. However, given that the average capacity factor realised by India’s wind farms is only about 17 per cent, the total contribution to energy from these plants would be relatively small. Thus while wind power may be pursued for environmental and economic reasons, its contribution to energy security will remain very limited. Off-shore wind power potential has not yet been assessed. As mentioned above such assessments should be taken up immediately.
- Solar: Solar energy, if it can be economically exploited constitutes a major energy resource for the country. Solar electricity generated through either the thermal route or using photovoltaic cells provides comparable amounts of electricity per unit of collector area. Both methods currently provide about 15 percent conversion efficiency. While it is clear that the ratio of capital cost to the efficiency of energy conversion needs to be brought down significantly, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic routes to electricity generation remain attractive alternatives to enhance India’s energy security. Nanotechnology holds the hope for making a major breakthrough in solar photovoltaic technology. It is stressed here that solar water heating is cost effective for India even today and can reduce India’s demand for oil, gas and coal if pursued to meet the hot water demand in industry and households.
- Energy Plantations: Growing fuel wood for running power plants either directly or after gasification can save the coal or gas used for generating power. Since the country’s energy needs are growing, imports of coal and LNG are also likely to grow. Fuel wood plantations can help improve energy security. The scope for such plantations is substantial. For example, if 10 million hectares of wasteland can be converted to fuel wood plantations with a sustained yield of 200 Mt of wood per year, it would obviate the need for some 200 Mt of domestic coal. Moreover since wood is a renewable fuel, no net carbon emission takes place. Thus all compensatory afforestation should be made in the form of energy plantations to improve India’s energy security.
Policies and Initiatives for Energy Security
- A legal claim to energy resources abroad can marginally enhance India’s energy security to the extent that such a claim increases the diversity of supply sources. Equity oil and gas abroad are being currently pursued. The NITI Aayog, recognising the looming coal import requirements, has been, emphasising equity coal for the past three years in order to further increase the diversity of supply of fuels. Nonetheless, these acquisitions should be primarily assessed as commercial investments.
- Another mitigating policy could be to diversify imported fuels as well as the sources of such imports. Today, almost 100 per cent of our energy import is in the form of crude oil with 67 per cent being sourced from the Middle East. A strategy to import larger quantities of Gas, LNG, coal, ore emulsion, ethanol etc, as additional energy sources should be considered. Further, imports from other countries can be enhanced for strategic diversification of supply sources.
- Power plants at coastal locations should be set up with captive jetties to run on imported coal.
- If and when the gas pipeline from Iran materialises, we may have a sudden increase in supply of natural gas of nearly 30 Mtoe a year. After meeting the feedstock requirement for fertilizer and chemical plants, the temptation will be to use this increased supply for power generation. Advance planning should be done to use this gas in more appropriate ways such as in distributed generation and CHP applications where we can get an efficiency of 80 per cent or more.
- India currently has stocks equal to about 85 days of requirement excluding line-pack and the strategic stocks for the defence department that are maintained by Indian oil. However, these stocks are more in the nature of raw material and finished good inventories (for which facilities had been built during the comfortable cost plus regime) and not in the nature of strategic reserves.
- Internationally, a 90 day strategic reserve is considered adequate for providing security against short-term supply disruption and/or extreme price spikes. India could earmark part of the available storage capacity with oil companies as strategic reserve controlled by the Government. Japan follows this practice and requires its oil companies to carry and maintain a strategic reserve. Additional strategic storage may also be built to supplement such mandated strategic reserves. Regional cooperation in South Asia in this respect can be fruitful. For a country like India, given the uncertainty about benefits, it may be more economical to hold the minimum reserves required to tide over very short-term supply disruptions.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.