82
3 The Challenges of Energy Supply
70.3
79.7
61.8
59.3
9.9
12.4
76.4
83.1
67.1
24.2
91.1
80.2
84
94.3
94.4
93.8
62.7
70.9
30.5
67.5
74.8
85.6
56.7
4.8
24.3
60.8
81.7
66.1
20.4
85.1
79.2
88.6
93.1
90.9
90.3
64.9
58.4
18.5
Electricity generated by fossil fuel (% of total) in 2013
Electricity generated by fossil fuel (% of total) in 2017
Fig. 3.5 Electricity generated by fossil fuel (%) (Source World Bank 2013, 2017)
Fig. 3.6 A 500-MW thermal
plant uses limestone, coal,
and water (Source Srivastav
2019)
To Produce 3.5 billion
kilowaƩ-hours per year.
146,000
tons of
limestone
2.2 billion
gallons of
water
1,430,000
tons of
coal
3.2 Carbon-Intensive Energy Sector
India’s energy sector accounts for 77% of its greenhouse gas emission and 4.91% of
global greenhouse gas emission (Sinha et al. 2019). Heavy dependence on coal for
power generation and the use of inefficient sub-critical plants to burn it push up the
carbon intensity of India’s power sector to 791 g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour
(gCO 2 /kWh), compared to the world average of 522 gCO 2 /kilowatt-hour. Based on
past emission levels and GDP forecast, absolute emissions may go as high as 6.5
billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 (Sinha et al. 2019) as compared
with 3.5 billion tons in 2015, a rise of almost 85%.