Adani Total Gas launches Greenmosphere initiative
Adani Total Gas and a joint venture between the Adani Group and Total Energies, has launched a new green initiative that targets afforestation, outreach to millennials, and energy audits. Titled Greenmosphere, this ATGL initiative will drive mass tree plantation programmes, spread awareness about climate change among the young, and encourage sustainable energy practices through energy audits. The afforestation programme, which envisages large-scale community participation, aims to increase the fresh sources of oxygen. This, in turn, will reduce the copious amount of greenhouse gases. ATGL sees Greenmosphere as a corporate movement that will help in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by halting deforestation, boosting afforestation, and supporting wetland conservation.
Delhi collected Rs 1,298 cr in green fund; spent only one-fifth in 6 years
The Delhi government has spent only 21 per cent of the Rs 1,298 crore collected as environment compensation charge from diesel-guzzling trucks entering the capital in the last six years, according to official data. Implemented on the directions of the Supreme Court, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) collects the cess and deposits it with the Transport Department. Since November 20, 2015, the city government has utilized only Rs 281.5 crore of the Rs 1,298 crore collected as “environment cess” on green projects, as per a reply to an RTI application filed by social activist Amit Gupta. The maximum fund (Rs 271 crore) was utilised in the financial year 2018-19, with the city government sanctioning Rs 265 crore to the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) for the Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) project. The NCRTC is a joint venture of the Centre and governments of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for implementing the RRTS project across the National Capital Region. According to the RTI reply, the government released Rs 93 lakh to the SDMC in 2016-17 as “pre-tendering incidental cost of RFID” project which involved installation of automatic radio frequency identification devices at Delhi’s border points for collection of toll and environment cess. It also sanctioned Rs 15 crore from the amount for a pilot project which involved using Hydrogen-enriched CNG in 50 state-run buses in 2018-19 and 2019-20 to reduce pollution and improve fuel economy. The project has since been put on the backburner. Last month, PTI had reported that the government spent Rs 527 crore on green activities from Rs 547 crore collected in the Air Ambience Fund since 2008. Set up in 2008 and collected through the Department of Trade and Taxes, the Air Ambience Fund gets 25 paise from the sale of each litre of diesel in Delhi. The fund has been utilized for grant of subsidy to battery-operated vehicles, e-rickshaws, odd-even drive, maintenance of the bio-gas plant at the Delhi Secretariat, operating online air monitoring stations, study on real-time source apportionment, installation of smog tower and salary of environment marshals, according to the government.
Govt leaves ONGC headless as musical chairs continue
For more than 24 hours since 5 p.m. on Friday, no one has been in charge of India’s most valuable public sector company, ONGC, as the government failed to appoint even an officiating chairman after incumbent Subhash Kumar superannuated. It is quite likely that India’s flagship explorer, which accounts for the bulk of domestic oil and gas production and has annual capex plans in excess of Rs 300 billion, will continue to be headless for another 24 hours unless the government goes out of the way and orders someone to take charge on Sunday. In normal circumstances, director (HR) Alka Mittal, the seniormost functional director on the board, would have been asked to take on the mantle from Kumar. While the oil ministry did no such thing, it issued an order on December 28 giving director (onshore) Anurag Sharma additional charge as director (finance) — which was Kumar’s job before he was given the additional role of chairman — from Saturday. The situation, industry observers said, was unprecedented and could indicate the government’s desire to hoist a bureaucrat as chairman with the aim of subjugating the management into hiving off ONGC’s large producing fields. They pointed to repeated letters written by a senior bureaucrat in the ministry, asking the company to sell a major share in Mumbai High and Bassein fields to private firms – ostensibly with the aim of inducting technology for raising production. Indeed, ONGC has been without a duly selected chairman since February 2021 after Shashi Shanker retired. Kumar was appointed as Shanker’s successor as he was the seniormost functional director on the board and retired as chairman since the government failed to find a regular chairman through due selection process – either through government headhunter PESB or search-cum-selection committee. Usually, the Cabinet’s appointments committee puts the seniormost functional director in charge as chairman if a successor is yet to be chosen or appointed before the incumbent retires. The appointment can be for three months or till the appointment of a regular chairman selected through due process. The order is usually issued 2-3 days before the incumbent’s retirement, giving time for briefing the replacement. The administrative minister — Hardeep Puri in case of ONGC — also has discretionary power to put someone in charge on an ad-hoc basis for three months in case the appointments committee does not take a call. Curiously, PESB on June 4 last year conducted interviews for selecting Shanker but did not find anyone suitable from among nine candidates, including two serving IAS officers. It later said a selection committee will be set up to widen the search. The committee is yet to be set up.
Oil prices in 2022 might not reach the high levels of last year
The year 2021 witnessed an upward shift in the price of oil globally, reversing the falls of previous years. After trading at around $85 per barrel in late October, Brent oil fell sharply in November to $69 per barrel by early December. It rebounded thereafter and is currently trading in the upper $70s. Looking ahead to 2022, oil prices are not expected to reach those highs as energy supply is expected to grow faster, catching up on 2021 demand as well as meeting the additional demand growth for 2022. The market’s main focus will be on the upcoming OPEC+ meeting that will be held on Jan. 4, even though it is widely expected to maintain the existing policy of a 400,000 barrel per day increase in output each month. Despite the recent dramatic spread of the COVID-19 omicron variant, crude market sentiments have been improving lately, as most governments are appearing to be more inclined to protecting their economies by imposing lenient mobility restrictions, rather than resorting to total lockdowns. Omicron can be expected to have a lower impact on global economic growth, although the aviation sector could take a hit as the number of cases further increases across the globe. Potential global supply disruptions will also give oil prices additional support, similar to the force majeure interrupting Libya’s Al-Zawiya and Mellitah terminals, Ecuador’s heavy rains that led to the closure of several of its oil production facilities and the interruption of Shell Forcados exports in Nigeria last week after a malfunctioning barge blocked tanker access. Natural gas prices in Europe remain high following a recent surge, squeezing margins for refiners dependent on purchasing natural gas at spot prices. Refining margins have been rather strong in both European and Asian markets lately, brushing aside the weakness seen in early December as the downstream segment appears to have shrugged off fears of omicron having a major impact on demand. In fact, margins rebounding to strength are essentially a reflection of refiners’ concerns which triggered lower run rates. While demand remains robust, refining profitability should weaken further down the road once shortages are alleviated.
Is India missing the green hydrogen bus?
There is today little ambiguity about the empiricism of changing climates the world over. From increased frequencies of intense extreme events to melting ice and sea-level changes, the ramifications of a warming world are palpable. For poorer nations such as India, the rapidity of these changes herald unprecedented hardship, first for those living in fragile environments—leaving a trail of ghost settlements; cascading into the lives of people who reside in endowed and perhaps more resilient regions. As per a 2018 World Bank report, a business as usual scenario could potentially lead to half of the South Asian regions becoming moderate to severe climate change hotspots, affecting over 800 million people. In contrast, the report adds, this vulnerability can be substantively reduced to 375 million if global emissions are halved through collective action. This, of course, is not easy. As far as India is concerned, the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on 1 November 2021, saw a 2070 net-zero pledge from the nation. The only other country that has a 2070 target under consideration is Indonesia, while most of the high carbon-emitting nations bind themselves by law and policy to touch the net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050 or before (China at 2060). Being the third-largest global emitter of CO2, India’s near 20-year lag in meeting the target can perhaps skew efforts to stabilize global temperatures. Although the well-promoted net-zero discourse needs to integrate the largely unaddressed issue of de-carbonization, its current arrangement does help strategies time-specific low-carbon pathways. For India a 2070 target, though distant, may need to top the nations’ political distractions in order to make meaningful interventions for climate-vulnerable life and livelihood choices. India’s energy mix is largely coal dominant—not likely to change anytime soon, despite its huge renewable push (as of September 2021, thermal power—power generated from burning coal, gas and petroleum—comprised 60% of India’s installed capacity in power generation with coal accounting for nearly 50%). A 2030 renewables target has been upwardly revised to 500 GW from 450 GW and carbon intensity has been pledged to be reduced by 45% within the decade. Considering that in the six years since the Paris Agreement, India was able to add 65.06 GW renewable capacity (as of September 2021, wind capacity was 39.87 and solar stood at 46.28 GW, representing about 38% of the overall installed power capacity), it would be interesting to see India add about 400 GW in mere nine years. As India struggles to put wind and solar farms and dabbles with electric vehicles, the world is securely and surely moving onto an era of green hydrogen. Nations such as Japan, China, Canada, France, Australia, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Chile, and Finland, as well as the European Union have already begun to use hydrogen for their petrochemicals and fertilisers industries. Although the majority of the hydrogen produced at present is “grey”, made from natural gas, data from International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that the use of solar, wind or other green power sources to produce “green hydrogen” is highly feasible. Japan and China have accelerated their investments in green hydrogen to help the nation’s transition to a low-carbon economy. China in fact has inked a 2021-2025 trajectory for its hydrogen industry as one of China’s six top industries of the future. Opposed to nations that are looking towards transitioning their internal economies, there are others that are looking towards global export of green hydrogen. Chile, Argentina and Paraguay are a few such countries that are geographically endowed with cold deserts that are high-efficiency renewable energy generation regions. Such is the locational advantage of this area that it has been touted as the “new Saudi” of green energy. In years to come, the Magallanes and the Chilean Antarctic region, with overlapping (unrecognized) claims with the Argentine and British Antarctic territories, may well become a hotspot for geopolitical manoeuvring around green hydrogen. Closer home, however, yet another cold, dry and windy region offers a similar opportunity—the Tibetan plateau (Fig 1). China’s successful 850 MW Longyangxia Dam solar facility in the area should be reason enough for India to identify Ladakh as the most promising location for establishing green hydrogen facilities. Juxtaposed however are feeble efforts by India’s Nav Ratna companies such as NTPC to line up tenders this year to procure fuel cell buses for Ladakh and place a 1.25 MW solar power plant to produce green hydrogen in the future. Other public sector units too, such as GAIL and Indian Oil are at a nascent stage of hydrogen generation at various locations in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a National Hydrogen Mission in August 2021, a welcome recognition of the need to transition towards a green hydrogen pathway. Yet the R&D allocation of a meagre Rs 250 million in the Union Budget 2021-2022 was confounding. To put things in perspective, an exploratory Deep Ocean Mission with manned underwater submersibles (as grandiose as India’s space programme) that envisages mining at depths of 6,000 m in the distant future is allocated Rs 40 billion, while a green hydrogen target that is near achievable, helping the nation transition into low-carbon energy matrix earlier, is handed a paltry allocation. A net-zero transition strategy for the entire spectrum of the energy sector, modelling both public and private enterprise, is therefore imperative. It would be prudent for us to realize that with every fraction of upward creeping global temperatures, a larger amount of water vapour would be held in the atmosphere. This is, and would more devastatingly in the future, cause life-threatening extreme events. Not only would South Asia incur huge losses in agriculture with rising plant, animal and human disease burdens, but it would also lead to large scale climate refugees and crippling uncertainties. If the new flick “Don’t Look Up” is anything to go by, the onus of sensitizing the populace about intangible future events lies with the political dispensation of the day, who tragically driven by profiteering industry, lead the world to a horrific and dark