The New York Times’ environmental blog, Dot Earth, has the story
The troubling tension between propelling prosperity and limiting climate risks in a world still wedded to fossil fuels is on full display this week. India’s Tata Power group just gained important financial backing from the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, for its planned $4 billion, 4-billion watt “Ultra Mega” coal-burning power plant complex in Gujarat state.
While it might be tempting to decry this development (and I’m very, very tempted), the alternatives aren’t exactly cheery either. This plant might be huge, but they’re at least built with state-of-the-art coal technology, which is substantially more efficient than the alternatives. And the global abstract concerns of climate change are brought into perspective when you realize (As pointed out in their comments thread) hundreds of thousands of Indians die every year from pollution - the pollution of the air in their house from cooking fires. And while we all might like this to be made redundant by solar panels or windmills, the more likely alternatives are millions of petroleum-fuelled small generators, or dozens of small, inefficient, and even more polluting smaller coal-fired plants. Or nukes - if they could get the uranium from somewhere…
I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. It’s 2008. The plant is yet to be built. Is there any reason to suspect that they were considering an alternative of, say, using a design from 1910? 1970?
I think you’re abusing the term “alternative”.
If you look at the coal plants that are being built in Chindia en masse, they’re using technology from, well, around 1970.
Th thermal efficiency of a modern supercritical plant like the proposed ones is a lot higher than older subcritical designs.
Sounds like a pretty good investment, especially if they have their own coal, or are they importing? Steaming coal price has risen a fair bit in the last few years.
It’s near Mumbai, about 16m people live there, and you can bet hardly any give a damn about Al Gore.
The Dot Earth article states that the plant is 40% more efficient at burning coal than India’s average. I don’t know how much gas is around that area, but a combined cycle gas turbine plant would still be more efficient (and have much less emissions) than that.
Lets just hope as they build the damned thing,India will discover ways of using the carbon dioxide in some manner,even if it isnt a 100% of emission potentials.Inspiring a little confidence in themselves as Engineers could go a long way.After all besides ways of cooking,there will obviously be new industrial plant in operation,these operation plants might in themselves need carbon dioxide in some form for some specific purpose.No-one really has taken me seriously,about valuing carbon dioxide emissions as potential wealth generator by exhausting every conceivable use of the stuff including its conversion to other matters.India may have the combination of engineers and population Will to do just that,and teach usall a lesson.I am still vague about what I was on about in the burning of steel wool,try YouTube to see kids having a wow of a time,and CO2,combining in some form..I will clear it up eventually,but lit steel wool seems to be implosion rather than explosion,and carbon dioxide being emitted from plants under our sun ,seems to have in my mind at least, the same implosive escape effect.Converting the natural philosophy as comparisons to modern experiment is just a little out of my reacMeanwhile enjoy the YouTube videos of kids playing around with burning steel wool and then seek out the experiments with carbon dioxide,lot of fun.A smidgeon dangerous,but not that dangerous.