Muppandal Wind Farm, India’s largest operational onshore wind farm at Aralvaimozhi in Kanyakumari | Adobe.
Professor Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies at Harvard University and Chair of the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment, leads a research group studying how India might forge a path towards a decarbonized energy system. He will present his thoughts at the upcoming March 30 event, “Decarbonizing India’s Energy Economy.”
Mittal Institute: Thank you for speaking to us, Professor McElroy. You have done a lot of research at the intersection of energy, climate, air pollution and development in China. When and why did you start broadening your interest to these same challenges in India?
Michael B. McElroy: China became the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases about 10 years ago, surpassing the United States. The United States is number two. The EU is number three. And number four is now India, with a rapid growth rate in terms of its emissions. Then you look at the overall dynamics of its situation. India has the world’s second largest population, it has rapid growth in its GDP, and its influence on global affairs is important and growing. In some sense, people are looking at the path that China took: it progressed from the point where Chinese were not worried about climate change in the 1990s and 2000s – instead focused on poisoning people from the air pollution they were breathing – to the point it is at now, where China has begun to resolve some of its worst air quality problems and is increasingly taking a leadership role in dealing with the new global imperative of climate change. It is natural to wonder now if that is the model for India’s future as well, or in what respects it can or should take a different path? India has very serious air quality problems; India is also very heavily reliant on coal as its primary energy source. And so, in some respects, it’s an obvious thing to explore next India’s future energy economy in a world of changing climate.
Michael B. McElroy | By Claudio Cambon for HUCE.
China became the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases about 10 years ago, surpassing the United States. The United States is number two. The EU is number three. And number four is now India, with a rapid growth rate in terms of its emissions.
Mittal Institute: When you envision the next decade, in which India aims to transition to 50% renewables, what energy sources do you think will be major components of this goal?
Michael B. McElroy: We have a number of papers trying to address the prospects for more renewable energy in India. One of the things I am particularly proud of is that we have been able to engage our Chinese visitors in thinking about India and other nations, as well as thinking about China, and hope to encourage the reverse, meaning Indian scholars thinking not only about India but the rest of the world. I would like to believe that we’re promoting a more significant international research engagement on critical issues, where our scholars have a more global perspective.
India has a significant opportunity to develop its potential renewable energy resources. At the same time, India really has to cut down on its use of coal. Coal and other fossil fuels are poisoning the air in large parts of India; in fact, if you look at the data, you see Indian cities are frequently now worse than the worst cities in China in terms of their air quality. One of the opportunities we see is promoting a larger role for wind and solar in the future of India’s energy economy. However, it’s not easy to make this transition, because it takes investment and India has legitimate aspirations to continue to grow its economy. It also has legitimate aspirations to clean up its environment, in terms of air quality and water quality. But it has a number of problems to deal with, including its heavy reliance on coal as a means to generate electricity, and its reliance on imports of oil and gas to fuel its development.
We do recognize that there are many issues that go along with a possible shift to wind and solar power. For example, the Indian government has the view that solar energy is very significant. But during the monsoon season there is a lot of cloud cover that cuts down on the sunlight reaching the surface, making wind a better source of electricity during this period. India has the problem of supplying electricity demands over the entire year, taking into account the variability of both wind and solar. That is a significant aspect of our research: looking at ways in which you can balance electricity demand over the course of the year, with very different seasonal situations in India.
One of the things I am particularly proud of is that we have been able to engage our Chinese visitors in thinking about India and other nations, as well as thinking about China, and hope to encourage the reverse, meaning Indian scholars thinking not only about India but the rest of the world. I would like to believe that we’re promoting a more significant international research engagement on critical issues, where our scholars have a more global perspective.
The other point I think needs more attention is projecting future climate change in India. There are two factors that affect future climate: One is particle air pollution, which reflects sunlight back into space and has a cooling effect; and the other is greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and so on) that are warming Earth’s surface. What is actually happening at the moment is that the warming is being partially offset from cooling from the air pollutants. But India has no choice but to solve the air quality problem because of its corresponding public health impacts. And then you anticipate that the warming is going to become more serious. We’ve been looking at future models of climate, including a paper submitted recently by key author Peter Sherman, our new postdoctoral fellow, that looks at the future demands of air conditioning in a warmer India. And when you model this, you realize that the kind of warming that is predicted to occur in the summer season in India makes it catastrophically difficult for some vulnerable people to survive, unless they have access to air conditioning. People can die because of heat prostration and the temperatures that we anticipate in the future. When building our future models, factoring in more demand for air conditioning becomes something that we must include.
Chattris of Bada Bagh near Jaisalmer, India surrounded by wind turbines | Adobe.
Mittal Institute: President Modi’s commitment to net-zero emissions has been called bold. What do you think of this COP 26 commitment – do you think it is feasible?
Michael B. McElroy: I think that aiming for net zero emissions is feasible and a very good idea. But why 2070? In some respects, what we are doing is saying, can you imagine getting there by 2050, as some other countries are doing? It would be demanding, but I really think it is feasible.
One of the things that’s a little concerning, though, is the pressure that the Indian government is experiencing to do something. This pressure may set them on a dangerous path of choosing an action that may not be the smartest course. For example, a recent policy initiative talked about using more domestic coal by turning the coal into liquid fuels that can then be used to drive the transportation sector. But when you think about it, that is going to produce a very large amount of CO2. And if you’re going to do that, you have to imagine capturing the CO2 and burying it or doing something else with it. From our reading of the recent policy initiative, it doesn’t seem as though the government has fully anticipated all the challenges. We see ourselves as having the responsibility to try to bring truth and realism to some of these aspirations. In terms of the transportation sector, we do think that it’s better to follow the same path of other countries, using renewable energy with battery powered vehicles – I think that’s the more realistic path forward.
A point I want to underline is that it’s really, really important to build the kind of partnerships in India that we already built in China. In other words, we don’t want to get into the situation where people at Harvard are telling India what to do. It must be a combination of people at Harvard, colleagues in India, and colleagues from other parts of the world, all collaborating on research that is informed and influential.
The other thing we are very much interested in is the potential for a significant role of zero-carbon hydrogen as an energy source and feedstock in the future Indian energy economy. We’ve been studying that issue with our work in China and now also in India; the opportunity here is to use excess wind and solar electricity to produce hydrogen – so-called “green hydrogen” – that can have a variety of applications in India. For example, it can be used to produce ammonia, which India very much needs for its agricultural sector. Currently India’s ammonia is being produced from imported natural gas. We think that there’s a better way to go here, in which you can exploit the significant wind and solar resources to produce hydrogen, and then convert that hydrogen to ammonia. And that also would accomplish what seems to be one of the ambitions of the Indian government, which is reducing its need to import oil and natural gas. In turn, that would be good for its economy. You could even imagine India as a future significant global exporter of some of these renewable fuels like hydrogen and ammonia. It is important for our work to explore the range of possibilities that could be imagined.
A point I want to underline is that it’s really, really important to build the kind of partnerships in India that we already built in China. In other words, we don’t want to get into the situation where people at Harvard are telling India what to do. It must be a combination of people at Harvard, colleagues in India, and colleagues from other parts of the world, all collaborating on research that is informed and influential.
Farm workers clean the solar panels for better efficiency | Photo courtesy of Prashanth Vishwanathan, Flickr.
Mittal Institute: What does this commitment mean on a global scale – how will it impact other developing or developed countries?
Michael B. McElroy: I think that the opportunity for India to have an influence on other developing countries in terms of how they are going to build a sustainable energy system is very significant. But it really is important to think about the challenges that India has internally, because it’s a still a relatively poor country with a large rural population in which a significant number does not have access to electricity. So some of the things we hope to be able to do are domestically-focused.
I am in the early stages of putting together a book on India and climate and energy with our Visiting Scholar, Prem Shankar Jha, a distinguished Indian journalist. Prem has a very strong view that you cannot take the same developmental path that has been adopted by the wealthier nations – by the U.S, by Europe, and to some extent, by China. Developing countries have different priorities that need to be separated and highlighted. It’s not a matter of just taking the lead from the rich countries and doing the same thing and trying to do it faster. His view is that building the Indian economy requires initiatives that not only recognize the risks of climate change but also work towards alleviating poverty in a major way. Prem is pushing us hard to think about encouraging development in rural areas of India; trying to cut down on the current trend towards urbanization, which he regards as a negative; using agricultural waste as a means to produce fuels that could be useful in the Indian rural economy and provide jobs. In fact, a climate-conscious development policy should have an emphasis on poverty alleviation.
Mittal Institute: What are you thinking about next in terms of India – where do you think the research needs to go?
Michael B. McElroy: It is a real pleasure to have opportunity to speak in our March 30 talk with the Mittal Institute, because I think one of the objectives should be to build strong research on the intersection of climate, energy and development in South Asia at Harvard, so that we really try to reproduce and broaden the strengths that we have in China. India has a number of strong academic institutions and also a number of very strong, globally significant industrial groups. It is important for us to try to build those relationships at Harvard and across the field, to include India. It is my hope, with the help with our colleagues here at the Center, that the University promotes an expanded influence on the challenges of climate change and development in South Asia. I believe it’s important for our overall educational mission.