Global power demand dips for first time since World War 2

Lesser carbon was emitted in 2008-09 thanks to the world’s electricity demand falling by 2.5 per cent, for the first time since World War 2, said Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Nobuo Tanaka at Bergen, 420 km north of Oslo, the capital of Norway. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 30, 2009, 01:18:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Bergen (Norway)

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Lesser carbon was emitted in 2008-09 thanks to the world’s electricity demand falling by 2.5 per cent, for the first time since World War 2, said Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Nobuo Tanaka on Thursday at Bergen, 420 km north of Oslo, the capital of Norway.

“It is a direct implication of recession,” Tanaka said at the international conference on carbon capture and storage technologies. “Climate change awareness also contributed a bit.”

The dip is equal to one-third of power generated in India (the world’s 11th largest power producer) or half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s electricity requirement.

“When people lose jobs, many tend to give up housing and live with roommates or relatives. This decreases electricity use. When manufacturing companies close, there is a huge fall in electricity demand,” he said. This much power can light a million poor homes in India and Africa.

Electricity contributes to around 24 per cent of total carbon emissions, most importantly greenhouse gas that leads to climate change. Climate change experts said the huge reserves of coal in India, China, US and Australia would be a major source of carbon dioxide emissions in the future.

Unlike the US, where demand has fallen by 3.7 per cent till January 2009, it has increased by over 2.5 per cent in India despite the slowdown.

Till 2030, IEA estimated, India’s annual electricity demand will rise by 3.6 per cent, resulting in many new coal-based power plants, causing higher carbon emission. Of the 200 coal-based plants to be commissioned around the world every year till 2015, IEA estimated, many of them will be in India and China, which have the fourth-largest and the largest coal reserves in the world respectively.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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