The National Conclave on Energy - towards a People-centred Alliance in the context of Climate Change
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The focus was on two major aspects:
the drive for large projects – super-thermal, large hydro and nuclear, resulting in grave consequences to local populations – displacement, environmental degradation and pollution. This violence of Big Science and Big Technology is compounded by the physical and cultural violence of state authorities – Central and State, on local populations struggling against the manipulative, fraudulent and illegal acquisition of land and natural resources towards building these projects.
These local populations do not derive any benefit from these projects – a pittance by way of compensation, low-class jobs, and not even the power and irrigation facilities generated by these projects.
This is compounded by the fact that just on achievable level efficiencies in power generation from existing facitilies, with a fraction of the cost, the supposed shortfall in power generation can easily be met.
the neglect of decentralised renewable energy – there is enough evidence that renewable energy works, and provides the benefit of low pollution, low displacement and local access and control of energy. There is a vast body of knowledge and experience on a variety of local, renewable energy systems working based on bio-mass, bio-energy, solar, wind, etc. This finds no place in official policy and in the Climate Action Plan
In addition, the Conclave reached out to ongoing local struggles, and those involved in struggles against the massive plans - 29 MoUs with private and Government players 37,000 MW to be generated by Private players and 21,000 MW by Government , in all 58,000 MW – an export oriented (outside Orissa) programme fo the State Government.
The participants were a mix of experts, researchers, technologists, NGOs and local communities.
The practical focus was on power generation and abuse. The Integrated Energy Policy came in for sharp criticism, as also the National Solar mission. Though the focus on renewable energy would reduce the potential carbon-footprint of the country, the emphasis was on provision of energy to rural households, irrespective of the reduction in potential carbon-footprint, and other benefits.
Ministers and bureaucrats attending the Inaugural Session and the Public Meeting were given feedback in no uncertain terms that the large-scale investments in mega-projects were unacceptable, and that these should be mainly to decentralized renewable energy options.
As a result of the deliberations, the following issues were identified as requiring urgent attention from the government:
In view of the fact that despite massive investment since independence in the large size conventional power plants such as thermal, dam based and nuclear power plants, 40% of the population has had no access to electricity. This has led to immense social and environmental destruction. There is an imperative to review the very energy policy itself. The integrated energy policy as prepared by the Planning Commission, which advocates massive increase in the installed capacity of conventional power plants by 2031-32, will not ensure equitable and sustainable energy supply to all sections, and also is not in the overall interest of our society.
The recent nuclear emergency in a techno-economically advanced society like Japan has clearly established that a poor and densely populated country like ours cannot afford to take the risk of such a nuclear accident. Hence all the proposals for additional nuclear power plants and all facilities associated with nuclear power technology should be dropped, and the operational safety of the existing nuclear power plants should be independently reviewed with a clear objective of mothballing them as soon as possible.
Dam based hydro electric projects being proposed in large numbers in the hilly regions of the country will pose multifarious problems to our society, including the accelerated death of the rivers. Such hydro power plants are not essential for the energy security, and hence their true relevance to our resource constrained country should be objectively reviewed, and environmentally friendly and people centric policies should be adopted.
The legitimate demand for electricity of various sections of our society must be determined keeping in view the issues like nature’s limits, environmental degradation, global warming and equitable availability of electricity to all sections.
The energy requirements of rural India must be given a high priority during next two five year plans, and policies should be implemented to meet much of these requirements through distributed renewable energy sources which are suitable to the local resources.
A serious impediment to the all round welfare of our society is the lack of effective inclusion of public consultation in the decision making process, which is leading to social unrests. Therefore the approval mechanism for large and high impact projects should be strengthened by making effective public consultation and objective Costs and benefits analysis a mandatory part of such approval mechanism.
The electricity required for meeting the immediate deficit can be largely met by increasing efficiency of the power sector, demand side management, reduction of transmission and distribution losses.
The conclave demanded complete review of the Integrated energy policy of the government which presently looks at a fossil fuel intensive energy production and growth path, and address the contradictions in the other government policies.
The conclave also decided to follow through on its deliberations on policy analysis, documenting the experiences on alternative and renewable energy, and work towards regional processes:
four groups relating to thematic domains:
People's voices on energy
Lobbying and Campaigning on energy issues
Alternative energy sources, and
Solutions + Alternatives
organize regional conclaves – north, south, east, north-east, deccan drylands and the west and 6 member ad-hoc steering group until the next energy conclave.
The Conclave ended with a press conference and a public meeting on local energy issues.
Resources for NGOs
