Emission Mitigation and Energy Security Trade-Off: Role of Natural Gas in the Indian Power Sector

Nandini Das,Oluf Langhelle,Joyashree Roy,Shyamasree Dasgupta,Mohsen Assadi

doi:10.3390/en14133787

Abstract

India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) aim to increase the share of non-fossil fuel, especially renewables, in power generation. But at the same time, it mentions that coal is likely to dominate the power generation in the short and medium term to meet the increase in demand and support the intermittency of renewable energy-based power generation. Thus, additional efforts to transform the thermal power generation to a more efficient and less emitting one in the near term by increasing the use of natural gas (a fossil fuel with a lower emission factor than coal) may be planned towards achieving India’s additional mitigation commitments. The paper presents the implications of a proposed increase in the share of natural gas in thermal power generation of India by looking into the trade-off between emission mitigation and energy security. Along with a Reference Scenario, three alternative emission scenarios are proposed to understand the likely impacts of increased penetration of natural gas in power generation on India’s projected emission profile up to 2050. Results suggest that higher mitigation potential can be achieved through fuel-switch in thermal generation and technological up-gradation to enhance energy use efficiency. The energy security due to the increased share of natural gas imports can be dealt with by diversifying import sources. Shifts can achieve this in the emphasis on long-term contracts.

Highlights

Achieving long-term stabilization of global mean temperature requires coordinated efforts from all the countries through various national level sectoral interventions [1,2]
We present a limited number of aspirational scenarios here because the goal is to explore some plausible alternative cases where natural gas can replace coal in India’s power generation sector based on the current policy discourse in the country
The study shows that by increasing the share of natural gas in power generation in India’s short–medium-term future, there could be a significant gain in emission reduction

Summary

Introduction

Achieving long-term stabilization of global mean temperature requires coordinated efforts from all the countries through various national level sectoral interventions [1,2]. Renewable energy-based capacity addition will be insufficient to cater to this increased demand given the intermittency problem. In such circumstances, coal is anticipated to continue in the power generation sector in India in the short–medium term [6]. The recent projection of NITI Aayog of India assumed implementation of CCS by 2025 [7], existing literature has found that it will be difficult to become operational before 2030 [8].), it is important to explore the role of other low-carbon fuels to replace coal for achieving relatively faster emission reduction from the power sector

Methods

Results

Conclusion