Can a Coal Power Plant Ever be Good?

Note: I wrote this essay for the Breakthrough Institute Blog. This first appeared here. The Breakthrough Institute, founded by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, is a progressive think tank focusing on environmental issues.


Recently, plans for a new "Ultra Mega" 4,000MW coal fired power plant in India has come in for much criticism from environmentalists. Writing on Grist.org, environmentalist Nathan Wyeth has called this a "monument to a failed approach". According to him,

Investing in coal generation and plugging it into an unreliable grid (rather than building renewables close to consumers or fixing the grid) has the effect of - get ready for this - spurring the construction of small-scale fossil fuel generation on the other end, which is ... incredibly dirty.

In my opinion, Wyeth's analysis is flawed. It does not take into consideration how, and for what purpose, small-scale fossil fuel generation is widely used in India. Let me give you a real-life example.

The company I work for has a software development center in Pune, India, which I occasionally visit. It is a large modern office building, in many ways better than our office here in Silicon Valley, California. However, there is one problem: power cuts. In order to deal with these, our company has installed back-up diesel generators - generators powerful enough to operate the air-conditioning system, the elevators, the lights, the computers, etc. While I was there, power cuts would occur approximately every other day for a couple of hours. The diesel generators would immediately swing into action, providing uninterrupted electric supply, but also spewing out huge quantities of thick black smoke into the city air.

This is surely the worst possible way to generate electricity. It is much worse than a large modern coal power plant, not only in terms of CO2 but even in terms of sheer "pollution" - the odor, the particulate emission, etc. As in my company, the most common reason for installing small-scale diesel generators in India is the need to have a back-up power supply. These diesel generators are expensive to operate, and are used only when absolutely necessary. How long they operate (and how much dirty emissions they produce) therefore corresponds directly to the deficit between the electricity demand and the (grid) supply. If a new power plant - even a coal fired one - can reduce the usage of these small-scale power generators, it will likely reduce carbon emissions overall for a given electricity demand.

Of course, the problems with the electricity grid in India are part of a larger problem of underdeveloped infrastructure - something we take for granted here in the U.S. Governance and administration at local levels have failed to provide adequate utilities and public services, such as electricity distribution, water, maintenance of roads and public transport, etc. There is certainly a very real need for investments in improving the electricity grid in India. However, it would be foolish to take the position that India should not build any new electricity generation capacity until all the flaws in the electricity grid are completely ironed out.

Whatever problems there are in the electricity grid, these problems are equally applicable to some forms renewable energy as well. Wind power is making headway in India, and one of the world's largest wind power companies, Suzlon Energy, is an Indian one. But wind power also needs the grid to deliver electricity to consumers since wind farms tend to be located far from population centers.

The grid losses that Wyeth cites are not as bad as they appear at first glance. True, the statistics on grid losses in India are staggering. However, it is not that all this electricity is somehow vanishing into thin air. The bulk of these losses come from people actually utilizing the electricity and not paying for it. Sometimes, this is done by unscrupulous individuals. However, in many cases, this "lost" electricity is put to perfectly good use. For example, many people living in shanty-towns in India do not have formal electricity connections. Local politicians eager to keep voters happy sometimes arrange for informal electricity connections. This electricity is counted as a "loss" in all the statistics, but is actually put to good use. No doubt, this is far from an ideal arrangement, and cannot substitute for proper commercial arrangements - but it goes to show that not all grid losses should be seen as equally wasteful.

Moving forward, it is clear that the Indian electricity grid needs to be dramatically improved. What is also clear that with a growing population and a growing economy, the legitimate demand for electricity is going to grow by leaps and bounds, and all that new electricity generation capacity has to come from somewhere. The question is: what technologies should be used? I would rank energy generation technologies in order of preference as follows:

1. Renewables (wind, solar, etc.)
2. Clean non-renewables (nuclear)
3. Moderately dirty but efficient fossil fuel power plants (e.g., coal-fired plants like the Tata Ultra Mega plant)
4. Small scale inefficient and extremely dirty generators powered by diesel or other fossil fuels.

Ideally I would like all electricity to be generated by renewables (who wouldn't?). But as we all know, this is not commercially viable today. Insofar as a coal-fired power plant replaces forms of power generation that are far dirtier, like diesel generators, and make electricity available to people without electricity, a relatively efficient coal-fired power plant, such as the Tata Ultra Mega plant, should be seen as a good thing.

Maybe Horses Will Fly - Developing Countries and Global Warming

Note: I wrote this essay for the Breakthrough Institute Blog. This first appeared here. The Breakthrough Institute, founded by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, is a progressive think tank focusing on environmental issues.

Last week, the New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin blogged about the World Bank's decision to finance a major new coal fired power plant in India. Revkin ended his blog with a question: "Is all of this bad? If you're one of many climate scientists foreseeing calamity, yes. If you're a village kid in rural India looking for a light to read by, no."

In response, the famed environmental writer Bill McKibben asked his own question:

"The really interesting question, to follow on the last sentence of the story, is: what if you're an Indian kid looking for a light to read by-and also living near the rising ocean, or vulnerable to the the range expansion of dengue-bearing mosquitoes, or dependent on suddenly-in-question monsoonal rains."

McKibben may think he knows better but I think the answer for that village kid would probably be the same. Take the electricity and the light to read by and worry about malaria and monsoonal rains later. To get some idea of the problems facing people in rural India, just consider the following:

1. In India, the literacy rate is only 64%. The female literacy rate is even lower. In half the households in rural India, there is not a single female member above the age of 15 who can read or write.

2. Out of a population of one billion, more than 300 million Indians live on less than a dollar a day.

3. In India, some 400,000 children under the age of five die each year from diarrhoea caused by easily preventable factors such as poor hygiene and unsafe drinking water.

4. Indian society continues to be plagued by extreme forms of discrimination and exploitation based on the traditional caste system. There are many millions (estimates range from 40 million to 100 million) of bonded laborers (slaves) in India today, mainly belonging to the lowest castes, the Dalits.

5. There still exists widespread discrimination against women in India. Economist Amartya Sen estimates that in the developing world, due to the preference for sons over daughters, and due to the sheer neglect of women and girls, some 100 million women are simply missing.

In this scenario, how can one seriously suggest that the village kid in India should give up her hopes of prosperity, education, and health care today, in order to prevent rising ocean levels many years down the road? What would Americans do in the same situation? Or Europeans? Or human beings anywhere?

There are some very good reasons why people in rural India should first worry about their basic human necessities today, rather than about the long term effects of global warming.

First, if you and your family don't have access to such things as clean water and basic health care, neither you, nor your children, nor your grandchildren may even be around long enough to witness tomorrow, making the future rise or fall of the world's oceans a moot point.

Second, the life of an educated, healthy and modestly prosperous person living in tomorrow's globally-warmed world of higher ocean levels may well be better than the poverty stricken life of an Indian villager in the pre-global-warming world. In other words, even if the most dire predictions about global warming come true, some of the poorest people in the world may still be better off tomorrow if they are able to enjoy some of the fruits of development, such as education, health care, electricity, etc.

Third, and most important, maybe horses will fly. Let me tell you an Indian story about the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his witty minister, Birbal. One day, for some reason, Akbar became very angry with Birbal, and ordered that he be beheaded. Birbal pleaded for his life, but to no avail. Then Birbal hit upon an idea. He promised Akbar, that if he was spared for a year, he would make Akbar's favorite horse fly. Akbar relented, and let Birbal live. When a friend asked Birbal how he planned to make the horse fly, Birbal replied, "anything can happen in a year; Akbar can die; the horse can die; and who knows, maybe the horse will fly." In a slightly different context, what this means is that, first and foremost, human beings need to achieve a certain minimum level of material well-being and sense of security. And once this is achieved, who knows what wonders can happen. If the billions of impoverished people in the developing world can get widespread access to education, health care, and job opportunities, who knows what the unleashing of their talent and energy can achieve. Having met their basic needs, maybe they will start thinking about the environment. Maybe new ideas will burst forth. Maybe new and better energy technologies will be adopted, which will not only address global warming, but also ensure a minimum standard of living for all people everywhere. Maybe horses will fly.

As Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger put it in the book Breakthrough, "the satisfaction of the material needs of food and water and shelter is not an obstacle to but rather the precondition for the modern appreciation of the nonhuman world".