D2E Editorial on Indian Environmental Struggles

Learn to walk Lightly
Aug 15, 2008

n Sikkim, bowing to local protests, the government has cancelled 11 hydro-electric projects. In Arunachal Pradesh, dam projects are being cleared at breakneck speed and resistance is growing. In Uttarakhand last month, 2 projects on the Ganga were put on hold and there is growing concern about the rest. In Himachal Pradesh, dams are so controversial that elections were won where candidates said they would not allow these to be built. Many other projects, from thermal power stations to Greenfield mining, are being resisted. The South Korean giant posco’s iron ore mine, steel plant and port are under fire. The prime minister has promised the South Korean premier the project will go ahead by August. But local people are not listening. They don’t want to lose their land and livelihood and do not believe in promises of compensation. In Maharashtra, mango growers are up in arms against the proposed thermal power station in Ratnagiri.

In every nook and corner of the country where land is acquired, or water sourced, for industry, people are fighting even to death. There are wounds. There is violence. There is also desperation. Like it or not, there are a million mutinies today. Like it or not, there will be two million tomorrow. Unless we understand these protests are not just about politically motivated people stirred up by outsiders and competitors to obstruct development.

I have written this before. After I visited Kalinganagar, where villagers died protesting against Tata’s project, I wrote this was not about competition or Naxalism. These were poor villagers who knew they did not have the skills to survive in the modern world. They had seen their neighbours displaced, promised jobs and money that never came. They knew they were poor. But they also knew modern development would make them poorer. It was the same in prosperous Goa, where I found village after village fighting against the powerful mining lobby, where people told me they were fed up because mining rejects destroyed their agriculture and dried-up their streams. These were educated, even skilled, people. But they did not want to drive the trucks of the miners. They wanted to till their land. Make money. Live well, if not rich.

This is the nub of the matter: we just cannot believe people, poor or relatively rich, do not want to leave their land, when we promise them jobs. We can only see their wretched poverty. We cannot understand their reason.

This article is not about them, but us. It is clear we need dams, steel plants and thermal power projects. These are key to our need to develop. We know this, and so we refuse to understand them. Used to getting our way, we are working to fast-track our development, through fiat. Our response is two-fold. First, we want to change and weaken environmental regulations in the name of streamlining procedures and providing single-window clearances to industry. Last year, the government, under pressure on environmental safeguards, changed the rules of the environmental impact assessment (eia) procedures. The idea was to ‘cut’ red tape and to give fast clearances. There is now pressure to give de-facto clearance to all mining projects that have been given a clearance to prospect for minerals. There are also murmurs about removing thermal projects from environmental clearances. And now, a powerful grouping of real estate movers and shakers are demanding no clearances be required for urban projects—malls, residential areas, whatever.

We also justify this process, saying the institutions that grant clearances are corrupt and incompetent. We do not say these same institutions have been made corrupt because we have promoted procedures for our convenience and access to decision-making. We do not say the eia is not worth the paper it is written on, or that the consultant is given money by us, not to assess a project but to get it cleared. We also do not demand these institutions must be given more staff, more facilities and more ways to do their job.

Second, we lose patience. And with it, we are losing our humanity. Today, people are in a dirty war even as we stoop, to stop at nothing to quell the fight. Our tactics are well rehearsed. We first work on the leaders. If we can’t buy them, we threaten them. If that fails, we hide behind the might of the state to ensure protest is muzzled. But what we should realise, fast, is these strategies are not working. Yes, we get our way in some cases, for some time. But what resentment and anger, even hatred, we create, in our own backyard. We must realise these struggles are not ‘time-pass movements’ (as the slang goes). These are about survival. The fact is in India vast numbers depend on the land, the forests and the water they have in their vicinity for their livelihood. They know once these resources are gone or degraded, they have no way ahead.

This is the environmental movement of the very poor. Here, there are no quick-fix techno solutions in which the real problems can be fobbed off for later. In this environmentalism, there is only one answer: changing the way we do business, with them and with their environment. It will demand we reduce our need and increase our efficiency for every inch of land we need, every tonne of mineral we dig and every drop of water we use. It will demand new arrangements to share benefits with local communities so that they are persuaded to part with their resources for a common development.

If we can listen and learn, maybe this environmentalism of the poor may teach not just us, but the entire world, how to walk lightly on earth. Maybe. Just maybe.

—Sunita Narain
Source: Down to Earth Editor's page Archive
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/editor.asp?foldername=20080815&filename=Editor&sec_id=2&sid=1

Tata Buy Bhutan power

Why nobody interested in such minimal damage projects in India

Tata Power buys 26 per cent stake in Bhutan power project

Mumbai: Tata Power Co Ltd has acquired a 26 per cent stake in Druk Green Power Corporation Ltd (DGPC) - the 114 MW run-of-the-river Dagachhu hydroelectric power project - being developed by the Bhutan government.

The project will be executed through a special purpose vehicle, Dagachhu Hydro Power Corp Ltd (DHPC), it said.

''We are happy to work with the Royal Government of Bhutan on the Dagachhu Hydro Electric Power project. This partnership consists of equity participation and offtake of power by the company and Tata Power Trading Company Ltd respectively,'' said Prasad Menon, managing director of Tata Power.

Tata Power Trading has agreed to purchase all the power generated from the project and Tata Power Trading will offtake power from the project for a period of 25 years. The power will be delivered at India-Bhutan Border.

21 July 2008

Oil cos seek review of eco clearance norms

This is what is called Corporate concern for Environment

clipped from www.financialexpress.com Oil cos seek review of eco clearance norms Sanjay Jog Posted online: Friday , July 18, 2008 at 01:30 hrs Updated On: Friday , July 18, 2008 at 01:30 hrs After the power companies, its the turn of oil companies to make a strong argument in favour of amendments to the existing environment clearance guidelines. In their recent presentation to the petroleum ministry, IOC, BPCL, HPCL, BRPL, MRPL and NRL have said existing guidelines should be eased out in a serious bid to achieve the timely completion of various projects. These companies have suggested that the terms of reference (ToR) and the methodology for the environment impact assessment (EIA) study should be standardised for different categories of industry and projects.

ABB wins INR 295 crore orders from JSW power plant

July 03, 2008

ABB wins orders for JSW power plant

It is reported that ABB in India has won orders worth INR 295 crore to provide power solutions for JSW Energy for its upcoming 1200 MW thermal power plant in Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.

The orders are for a range of power solutions including, electrical balance of plant, 400kV gas insulated switchgear substation and generator transformers.

Mr Biplab Majumder country manager & MD of ABB India said that "We are proud of our long standing partnership with the JSW Group. With this order we continue to build on this relationship. ABB’s power products and systems will ensure safe and reliable operation of the plant while optimizing energy consumption of the equipment."

ABB’s solutions for the project comprise several leading edge power technologies for improved system efficiency. The modular environmental business opportunities program solution for 300MW generating units will provide optimized and integrated solutions for complete plant electricals including shunt reactors, bus ducts, control and relay panels, MV and LT switchgear, other auxiliary systems and four 20kV generator circuit breakers, thus providing a further boost towards GCB scheme usages by thermal power plants in India.

The 400kV GIS substation will provide substantial space saving due to its compact design. With all live parts enclosed and protected against negative influences the gas insulated switchgear ensures enhanced operational reliability and safety.

ABB’s scope of delivery also includes 20/420 kV generator transformers. ABB’s transformers are designed and manufactured for high reliability, reduced life cycle costs and optimized electrical design for minimized losses.
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Source- http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3597601129625728001

Reliance Power acquiring coal mine in Indonesia

Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, May 02, 2008

Coal supplies for mega projects in AP, Maharashtra

Rahul Wadke

Mumbai, May 1 Reliance Power Ltd, the recently listed power generation company of the Anil Ambani group, would be investing about $1 billion (Rs 4,000 crore) in acquiring and developing a coal mine in the South Sumatra province of Indonesia.

The sub-bituminous coal would be supplied to the company’s 4,000-MW Ultra Mega Power Project at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, which would be on stream by 2013. Coal would also be supplied to the 4,000-MW Shahapur power project in Maharashtra, which has a thermal power component of 1,200 MW.

The mine has enough spare capacity to supply to an additional mega coastal power project.

Sub-bituminous is a type of coal whose properties range from lignite to bituminous coal. It is primarily used as fuel for steam-electric power generation.

Talking to Business Line, Mr J.P. Chalasani, CEO of the company, said that $600 million would be invested in the mine acquisition and another $400 million would be spent in setting up the 100-km railway line for transporting coal and setting up a captive jetty, he said.

Mr Chalasani said that mine has coal resources of about 2 billion tonnes. The exploitable reserves are about 1.2 billion tonnes. The mining rights are currently with a local company and have received all the regulatory clearances. There are no court cases pending against the mine. The mine will start producing coal by 2012-13, he said.

“There would be no upfront payment for acquisition. Payment is linked to the coal production and money would be paid on tonnage. Therefore, our Indonesian counterpart has additional incentive in developing the mine faster,” Mr Chalasani said.

Reliance Power is the second large domestic power company to acquire coal mines in Indonesia. In March 2007, Tata Power had invested $1.1 billion to purchase 30 per cent equity stake in two major Indonesian thermal coal producers, PT Kaltim Prima Coal and PT Arutmin Indonesia and a related trading company owned by PT Bumi Resources Tbk.
Up coming projects

Reliance Power is developing 13 projects of which three projects are likely to come up by 2010. The Rosa-I of 600 MW would be on stream by 2009 and Rosa-II of 600 MW by 2010. The Butibori captive power of 300 MW will come up in 18 months, a company official said.

More Stories on : Overseas Investments | Power | Coal

Italy Switching back to coal ?

Europeans switching back to coal

By Elisabeth Rosenthal

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

CIVITAVECCHIA, Italy: At a time when the world's top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, a leading Italian electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, the dirtiest fuel on earth.

Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent. And Italy is not alone in its return to coal.

Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are slated to build about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

The fast-expanding developing economies of India and China, where coal remains a major fuel source for more than two billion people, have long been regarded as one of the biggest challenges to reducing carbon emissions.

But the return now to coal even in eco-conscious Europe is sowing real alarm among environmentalists who warn that it is setting the world on a disastrous trajectory that will make controlling global warming impossible. They are aghast at the renaissance of coal, a fuel more commonly associated with a sooty Dickens novel and which was on its way out just a decade ago.

There have been protests here in Civitavecchia; at a new Vattenfall plant in Germany; at a plant in the Czech Republic; as well as at the Kingsnorth Power station in Kent, which is slated to become Britian's first new coal-fired plant in over a decade.

European power-station owners emphasize that they are making the new coal plants as clean as possible. But critics say that "clean coal" is a pipe dream, an oxymoron in terms of the carbon emissions that count most toward climate change. They call the building spree short-sighted.

"Building new coal-fired power plants is ill-conceived," said James Hansen, a leading climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "Given our knowledge about what needs to be done to stabilize climate, this plan is like barging into a war without having a plan for how it should be conducted, even though information is available.

"We need a moratorium on coal now," he added, "with phase out of existing plants over the next two decades."

Enel, like many electricity companies, says it has little choice but to build coal plants to replace aging infrastructure, particularly in countries like Italy, which prohibit nuclear power. Fuel costs have risen 151 percent since 1996, and Italians pay the highest electricity costs in Europe.

In the United States, fewer new coal plants are slated to go on line, in part because it is becoming hard to get regulatory permits for those previously planned and in part because nuclear power is an alternative, politically unacceptable in much of Europe.

In terms of cost and energy security, coal has all the advantages, its proponents argue. Coal reserves will last for 200 years, rather than 50 like natural gas and oil. It is relatively cheap compared to oil and natural gas, although coal prices have tripled in the past few years. More important, many countries export coal - there is not a coal cartel - so there is more room to negotiate prices.

"In order to get over oil, which is getting more and more expensive, our plan is to convert all oil plants to coal using clean-coal technologies," Gianfilippo Mancini, Enel's head of generation and energy management, said. "This will be the cleanest coal plant in Europe. We are hoping to prove that is will be possible to make sustainable and environmentally friendly use of coal."

"Clean coal" is a term coined decades ago by the industry, referring to its efforts to reduce local pollution. Using new technology, clean coal plants sharply cut down the number of sooty particles spewed into the air, as well as gases like sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. The technology has no effect on carbon.

In contrast, the technology that the industry is counting on to reduce the carbon emissions that add to global warning - carbon capture and storage - is not now available for coal. No one knows if it is feasible on a large, cost-effective scale.

Enel says it will only start experimenting with the technology - in which carbon emissions are pumped into underground reservoirs rather than released - in 2015, in the hopes of "a solution" by 2020.

"That's too late," said Jeff Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute.

In the meantime, new coal plants will be spewing more green house gas emissions into the atmosphere than ever before, meaning that current climate predictions - dire as they are - may still be "too optimistic," he said. "They assume the old energy mix even though coal will be a larger and larger part."

The problem is that carbon capture and storage, the holy grail of clean coal, will take global coordination and billions of dollars in investment, Sachs says, which no one country or company seems inclined to spend.

There are a few dozen small demonstration projects in Europe and in the United States, most in the early stages. But progress has not been promising.

At the end of January the administration of President George W. Bush canceled what was previously by far the biggest carbon capture demonstration project in the United States, at a coal-fired plant in Illinois, because of massive cost overruns.

The European Union had pledged to develop 12 pilot carbon capture projects for Europe, but said that was not enough. There is a new coal-fired plant going up in India and China every week and most of those are not constructed in a way that is amenable to carbon capture, even if it were developed.

Many have likened carbon capture's road from the demonstration lab to a safe, cheap, available reality as a challenge equivalent to putting a man on the moon. Norway, which is investing heavily to test the technology calls carbon capture its "moon landing." In fact it may be even harder than that. It is a moon landing that must be replicated daily at thousands of coal plants in hundreds of countries, many of them poor.

Plants that are capable of capturing carbon gases - those that generate pure carbon as an efflux - cost 10 percent to 20 percent more to build and only a handful exist today. For most coal power plants the costs of converting would be "phenomenal," concluded a report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

More to the point, while capturing carbon involves technology, storing it is at some level inherently local. Geologists have to determine whether there is a suitable underground site for storing the emissions, calculate how much carbon it can hold and then equip it in a way that prevent leaks and insure safety. A massive leak of underground carbon could be as dangerous as a leak of nuclear fuel critics say.

"Figuring out carbon capture is really critical - it may not work in the end - and if it is not viable, the situation with respect to climate change is far more dire," Sachs said.

On many fronts, the new Enel plant is a model of efficiency and recycling. The nitrous oxide is chemically altered to generate ammonia, which is then sold. The resulting coal ash and gypsum is sold to the cement industry. An on-site desalination facility means that the plant generates its own water for cooling. Even the heated water that comes out of the plant is not wasted: it heats a fish farm, one of Italy's largest.

But Enel's plan to deal with the new plant's carbon emissions consists mostly of a map of Italy with several huge white ovals superimposed - subterranean cavities where CO2 could be potentially be stored. The sites have not been fully studied by geologists as yet to make sure they are safe storage sites and well sealed. There is no infrastructure or equipment that could move carbon into them.

The new Enel plant here opens its first boiler in two months. It will immediately produce fewer carbon emissions than the ancient oil boiler it replaces, but only because it will produce less electricity, officials here admit.

In the towns surrounding Civitavecchia the impending arrival of a massive coal plant, with its three silvery domes, is being greeted with a hefty dose of dread.

"They call it clean coal because they use some filters, but it is really nonsense," said Marza Marzioli, spokesman for the "No Coal" citizens group in the nearby ancient Etruscan town of Tarquinia. "If you compare it to the old plant yes its better, but it's not 'clean' in any way."

The group says that Enel has won approval for a dangerous new coal plant by buying machines for local hospital and through massive public relations. Enel ads for the project show a young girl erasing a electricity plant's smokestack. A 2007 local referendum voted no, but the plant went ahead anyway, the group said.

The European Union, through its emissions trading scheme, has tried to get power plants to consider the costs of carbon by forcing them to buy "permits" for emissions. But with the price of oil so high, coal is far cheaper even with the cost of permits to pollute factored in, Enel has calculated.

Stephan Singer, head of European energy and climate office of the environmental group WWF in Brussels, says that math is shortsighted: The cost of coal and permits will almost certainly rise over the next decade.

"If they want coal to be part of the energy solution, they have to show us that carbon capture can be done now, that they can really reduce emissions" to an acceptable level, he said.

Chowgule Steamships Signs Concession Agreement for Development of Jaigad Port

Stock Report

Chowgule Steamships Signs Concession Agreement for Development of Jaigad Port

Chowgule Steamships Ltd has announced that on March 28, 2008 Chowgule Ports & Infrastructure Pvt Ltd (CPIPL), a Company co-promoted by Chowgule Steamships Ltd, has signed a Concession Agreement with Maharashtra Maritime Board (MMB) inter alia for development of a minor port at Jaigad.

CPIPL is a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) floated to undertake the port infrastructure development and Ship Repair projects at Jaigad. The port development projects would be undertaken under BOOST basis. In terms of the Concession Agreement, MMB has also an option to contribute up to 11% in the eventual capital of CPIPL.

The stock was trading at Rs.37.05, up by Rs.1.75 or 4.96%. The stock hit an intraday high of Rs.37.05 and low of Rs.37.

The total traded quantity was 3546 compared to 2 week average of 79267.

Source: Equity Bulls

Posted On: 3/28/2008 3:22:24 AM

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