Mr S. P. Sethi, Principal Advisor, Energy, Planning commission of India

Mr. S. P. Sethi is the Principal Advisor, Energy, Planning commission of India and gave insights into the effects of Climate Change, the real amount of extractable coal reserves left with India, and the current and future energy scenario for the country.

Excerpts from the Interview

Climate change is in your rear view window, it is something that has happened – we are already facing the consequences of climate change – we have erratic rainfalls, sudden droughts, movements of population, class wars – it’s the same resources. And all this is coming – and they don’t talk about these things at all.

Solar is definitely THE option - We only need 8 million hectares of land is needed in India to make India self sufficient – and this can be on mountain tops etc (the beauty of solar there is no food vs energy war )

I wish instead of spending billions of dollars on the iraq war we had spent on research on solar – these are sensitive moral issues behind this. Suddenly we have trillion dollars to bail out banks and we cant find money to go after solar research.

There is nothing like clean coal technology – it is a myth

Indias cola reserves are only there for 30-40 (45 years) of extractable coal reserves – projections are that my total coal import requirements could equal the total world trade today in coal – can u imagine if India enters the market then what the coal prices will be.

My problem is how do I provide 2/3rd of the people in this country without electricity – in the 21st century it is almost inhuman to have 700 million indias still cooking and getting 75-80 % of their energy consumption by firing some sort of biomass – it Is a disaster

The real problem is how do we give resilience to the bottom 2/3rd – because they are the ones who will suffer the most because of climate change – their livelihood is depended on rainfall and land

17% of world population
-    2.4% of land reserves
-    less than 2% water reserves
-    we consume 3.5% of global energy supply

We will run into all sorts of problems in the country – our development paradigm is not the correct development paradigm
-    the key resources we need for development – land water and energy – we are deficient in all of those