Energy and Renewable Resources

India has five nuclear reactors under construction (third highest in the world) and plans to construct 18 additional nuclear reactors (second highest in the world) by 2025.

Under the provisions of the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, Bureau of Energy Efficiency has been established with effect from 1^st March, 2002 by merging the erstwhile Energy Management Centre, a society under the Ministry of Power. The Bureau would be responsible for spearheading the improvement of energy efficiency of the economy through various regulatory and promotional instruments.

About 70% of India's energy generation capacity is from fossil fuels, with coal accounting for 40% of India's total energy consumption, followed by crude oil and natural gas at 24% and 6%, respectively.

Nuclear power is the fourth largest source of electricity in India after thermal, hydroelectric and renewable sources of electricity.
India's domestic uranium reserves are small and the country is dependent on uranium imports to fuel its nuclear power industry. Since early 1990s, Russia has been a major supplier of nuclear fuel to India.

Photovoltaics are the best known method for generating electric power by using solar cells to convert energy from the sun into a flow of electrons. The photovoltaic effect refers to photons of light exciting electrons into a higher state of energy, allowing them to act as charge carriers for an electric current. Photovoltaic power capacity is measured as maximum power output under standardized test conditions (STC) in Wp (Watts peak).

In a mammoth attempt to move domestic consumers to CFLs, India has registered the world’s largest carbon credit project, the Bachat Lamp Yojana (BLY) under the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism project. The BLY is expected to lead to the potential reduction of 6000 MW of electricity demand, and prevent 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. The project was officially approved by the CDM board of the UNFCCC on 29th April 2010.

The features of Energy Conservation Act, 2001, include -

Most of the hydroelectric power comes from the potential energy of dammed water driving a water turbine and generator. The power extracted from the water depends on the volume and on the difference in heights of the source and the water's outflow. This height difference is called the head. The amount of potential energy in water is proportional to the head.

India unveiled a policy to help boost power generation from renewable energy sources on 14^th Jan 2010. The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), the central electricity regulator in the country, issued a regulation on the framework of Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) mechanism, intended to facilitate and promote the development of renewable energy sources in the electricity market.

India's pet mission - the National Solar Mission under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), was launched on 11th January 2010, nearly two years after the release of the NAPCC in June 2008.

“Peak oil” is the period when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. It relates to a long term decline in the available supply of petroleum.

The National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency is the second of the eight missions under India's National Action Plan on Climate Change to be approved by the Council. The Mission will enable about Rs. 75,000 crore worth transactions in energy efficiency. In doing so, it will, by 2015, help save about five per cent of our annual energy consumption.
The most innovative and challenging new initiative to be introduced under the Mission is the “Perform, Achieve and Trade” (PAT) mechanism which will assign energy efficiency improvement targets to the country's most energy intensive industrial units, with the provision of allowing them to retain any energy efficiency improvements in excess of their target in the form of Energy Savings Certificates, called ESCerts.

Tidal power, also called tidal energy, is a form of hydropower that converts the energy of tides into useful forms of power - mainly electricity. Tides are more predictable than wind energy and solar power. Among the sources of renewable energy, tidal power has traditionally suffered from relatively high cost and limited availability of sites with sufficiently high tidal ranges or flow velocities, thereby constricting its total availability.

Hydroelectricity is the most widely used form of renewable energy, accounting for 16 percent of global electricity consumption, and 3427 terawatt-hours of electricity production in 2010, which continues the rapid rate of increase experienced between 2003 and 2009.

Wind power, as an alternative to fossil fuels, is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation and uses little land. Once the wind turbine is built, the energy it produces does not cause green house gases or other pollutants. Wind power is very consistent from year to year but has significant variation over shorter time scales.