Energy and Climate Change

As all of you know, the Nobel Peace Prize for year 2007 has been jointly awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) which is incidentally headed by an Indian, R K Pachauri, and the former American Vice-President Al Gore. If you look at what these guys have been doing, it’s been mainly the study of the effects of the activities of the mankind on Earth's climate with Al Gore, especially, doing a lot of work in the area of global warming. One thing that I feel worthy of mention here is the kind of post presidential and post vice-presidential activities Bill Clinton and Al Gore have been involved in. While Clinton is very much into his foundation which works with various governments/ governmental institutions and the leading pharmaceutical manufacturers to support HIV+ patients throughout the world, Al Gore returned to his environmentalist roots and is leading a movement against global warming. This leaves me wondering, when will we have leaders, who'll involve themselves in such noble causes?

When I think about climate change, I see that we are affecting the climate in 2 ways when it comes to energy - inefficient usage of energy and inefficient generation of energy.

When I look at the using of the energy, one thing that comes easily to the mind due to its wide usage, and my area of focus in this write up is the (incandescent) bulb. As everyone knows, the very concept behind its working is 'heating'. The filament is heated to get the incandescent light. This result in usage of more electricity and also more heat for the amount of light it gives. Till recently, there was no popular alternative to the bulb. But, recently we have seen the emergence of CFL as a very viable and energy efficient alternative to the bulb. It works on the concept of fluorescence (our traditional tube lights), emitting light without generating heat and also consumes lesser electricity and thereby, is more energy efficient and is also long-lasting and therefore, cost efficient too. It too has its drawbacks. It contains mercury in a very small amount and so, proper care needs to be taken while used CFLs are disposed off. So, I think that with more research on mercury content and competitive pricing, CFLs will lead the way in energy efficient, climate friendly and cost efficient lighting solution. One thing that I would like to mention here is that, an organization called GREENPEACE has launched a campaign in India called 'Ban the Bulb' and one of its major victories has been that Mysore Palace authorities have reportedly agreed to replace all the 96,000(yes, ninety six thousand... you have read it right) incandescent bulbs used for that grand palace lighting with CFLs. I, at this point of time, will leave out the other major contributors for climate change namely, automobile emissions and industrial emissions/wastes for future write ups.

Now, when we look at the energy generation, the major contributors of energy generation in India have been, I guess in the same order, Hydro(water), Thermal(coal) and Nuclear(fissile grade uranium U-235). All these three have their own effects on nature and climate. In case of hydro electric power generation, we can see that dams are built; rivers are diverted causing submergence of huge amount of forest land among others. Thermal power generation has its ill effects with the emission of carbon gases to the atmosphere and to talk about the problems we can have with nuclear power generation, one word - Chernobyl, will give us the account of the kind of damage that an accident in a nuclear power plant can be caused. So, a lot of work needs to go into these power generation techniques as to make them more efficient and safe. Also, if readers have not yet observed, I have not mentioned solar power and wind energy as they are not yet popular power generation techniques owing to their higher costs, but I must also mention that they are nature friendly. So, we also need a lot of research on these energy generation techniques to make them more cost efficient.

To close this write up, I would like to reiterate my stand of having lots of research on thorium based nuclear reactors as we have one of the largest thorium reserves in the world and only try to import uranium as a short term arrangement instead of opening up major power reactors to IAEA and American inspections and allowing other countries to have a say in our effort to have a minimum deterrence. More on my views about the Indo-US nuclear deal will be coming up shortly.