THOUSANDS OF FANS CAN COOL INDIA
Tags: Green House Gas, Wind Energy, Global Warming, Renewable Energy, Climate Change

Base image: Jan Kopriva from pexels.com

In the quest for development, we are exploiting mother nature recklessly and injecting poison in the natural environment. Now, this has exceeded the limit, the earth’s surface is getting warmer, the ecological system of earth started dying. This will kill us all very soon unless we take immediate action to rejuvenate it. Wind energy can help us to a great extent. Fans of wind turbines can make the earth cooler.

Cause of Global Warming

What is causing global warming is very important to understand. In the journey of social and industrial development, we are using fossil fuels like gasoline, diesel, coal etc. to operate our power plants, to drive our vehicles, in aviation, in shipping and manufacturing industries in an ever-increasing manner. This massive usage of fossil fuels is generating a huge amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses and those are getting released in the atmosphere freely, causing Green House Effect (GHF) and resulting into Global Warming.

What is the Green House Effect

When gasses like Carbon Dioxide, Methane and some other gasses get released as a result of fossil fuel burning, these gases go up and makes a shield in the upper atmosphere. This shield acts as an insulator and obstructs earth’s natural heat dissipation process making it warmer than the habitable level. This is creating many adverse impacts in our ecosystem endangering the life of every living being including us.

During the last decade, the rate of polar ice melting has gone up by three times. Eventually, it is increasing the mean sea level and at some point in future, it can engulf low lying lands of many countries like the USA, Bangladesh, and the Netherlands.

GHG pollution is also making natural water bodies more and more acidic endangering the life of aquatic animals and other forms of lives.

According to an estimate China, USA, EU, India, Russia and Japan are the top responsible countries for emitting GHG.

Country wise emission percentage from fossil fuel

However, because of the greenhouse effect, the surface temperature of the earth is rising at a continuous rate.

· In a study it is found, that between 1906 and 2005 surface temperature of earth has been increased at a rate of 0.6 °C to 0.9°C on an average.

· In another study in 2013, IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reported that between 1880 and 2012, an increase in global average surface temperature was approximately 0.9 °C (1.5 °F).

· In the last 50 years, this rate has almost increased to a double fold.

· Further, the estimate is that the earth surface temperature may increase between 3 and 4 °C (5.4 and 7.2 °F) by 2100, comparing to the average earth temp in 1986–2005.

Thus, Global Warming is acting as a silent killer for our civilization. ‘Think Tanks’ across the globe are raising serious concerns about this and emphasising on the urgent countermeasures. Almost all countries across the world have understood the necessity and are trying to find out feasible ways and means to reduce the usage of fossil fuel to control the GHG emission. India has also joined the league and committed to taking a lead role in the reduction of global warming.

How to Reduce Green House Effect-Thus Global Warming

In India, per capita, electricity consumption (1,181kwh) is much lower than developed world countries like USA (89455.6 kwh) as on date, but the consumption is growing every day along with the economic development of the country. Therefore, the emission of Green House Gasses is also increasing in equal proportion.

In India, different sectors of society contribute to this pollution at different proportions.

· Electricity & Heat production : 31%.

· Industry: 21%.

· Agriculture, Deforestation etc.:4%.

· Transportation: 14%.

· Other Energy: 10%

As the electricity generation in the conventional method shares 31% of emissions, attacking this portion and reducing it as much as possible in a phased manner could a meaningful immediate solution.

Renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar, have developed to such a level that these can be the economic alternatives for coal and lignite based power generation process. Also, we have enough resources to harness the sun and wind in our country. Though India is producing wind energy (electricity)for a long time, only during recently has taken up major steps to increase the share of it at an accelerated pace. As on date, around 18% of total energy is being produced from renewable sources (like Solar, Wind, Biomasses, Small Hydro )and the rest 92% are from the conventional method. Now in the next 10years(by 2030),there is a target to push it to 60% (from 18%). A very big target indeed! But in a paper recentlypublished by Harvard School of Engineering, researchers say that India can go even up to 80% by 2040 with good economics, thus can reduce CO2 emissions by 85%. If that happens, it will be a great contribution from our country to the world.

Participation of Wind Energy

I am a man from wind energy. I can see that it has been developed as a high potential and cost-effective source of renewable energy in recent decades. As a result, now drawing considerable attention from the investors and the Governments worldwide. In fact, Wind Energy technology is one of the fastest-growing technologies within the renewable energy space. Usage of wind power is rising worldwide because of its improved cost competitiveness when compared with the fossil fuel-based electricity generation method. In the last two decades, the total generation capacity of electricity from wind energy has increased by 75 times across the globe, from 7.5GW in 1997 to 564GW in 2018 and adding up every year, according to IRENA’s latest data published in 2019. I think the total global potential of wind energy is perhaps beyond any estimation at this moment, because of continuous technological developments in turbine technology, making previously unviable sites viable now for wind energy generation. In India, onshore wind energy potential is 302 GW at 100 meter Hub height and this estimate is much more than the earlier estimate of 103 GW at 80meter hub height. Technology improvement has made it possible to increase the hub height by 20 meters and beyond.

Government of India has a target to produce 60GW of energy from wind by the end of 2022, as a part of their program to produce total 175GW of energy from various renewable sources. Though, because of many reasons it doesn’t look like achieving 60GW will be possible within this time frame, nevertheless, it will arrive somewhere nearby as per GWEC report.

As of now, out of a total 18% share of renewable energy in our national power capacity, wind power is contributing 10%. Our Government has a plan to increase the share of ‘renewables’ from 18% to 54% by 2030, and wind energy will contribute by 17 % in it. Further pushing the ‘renewables’ share to 80% by 2040, wind energy requires to contribute by 58%.

So, the wind energy sector has a great future in our country. Harvard researchers also estimate that this progress wouldn’t be an expensive business for the Government, rather would come cheaper than the conventional coal-dominated power generation.

MNRE (2015) report truly said that ‘Renewable Energy offers the opportunity to contribute to social and economic development, energy access, secure energy supply, climate change mitigation, and the reduction of negative environmental and health impacts.’ Therefore, can help to save our planet from a disastrous overheating.

This article was originally published in, https://ordinarytalent.com/?p=195