India has announced plans to build the world’s biggest solar-power
generating facility on a salt-producing plain in Rajasthan, but experts
say the massive project may still face ecological hurdles. The
facility, to be located on 20,000 acres (30 square miles) of land owned
by Rajasthan’s government and a salt-producing firm, would have a
capacity of 4,000 megawatts of electricity, and cost $1.2 billion in the
first phase. India today uses an average of 772,000 gigawatt hours of power annually
.
A.N.
Srivastava, director of the country’s Ministry of New and Renewable
Energy, said in an interview the project should have a lifespan of 25
years, and would reduce the country’s carbon footprint by over 4 million
tons of carbon dioxide each year. Currently 67% of India’s energy
requirements are met by rapidly depleting coal deposits, he said, and
“to offset this dependency, India needs a clean energy revolution”. Backers say the project will sit on dried-up land no longer required for salt production. “There
is almost 30 square miles of barren land surrounding the (Sambhar Lake)
site which could be well-utilised for green energy production,” R.K.
Tandon, chairman and managing director of Hindustan Salts Limited, one
of the partners in the solar plant, said in an interview with Thomson
Reuters Foundation. The project fits under India’s National Action Plan
on Climate Change, which calls for greater use of renewable energy, and
would be environmentally friendly, he added.
The project aims to cut prices for solar energy
and close a huge gap between power production and power demand in rural
areas as per capita consumption of power grows in India, from about 780
kilowatt hours per person in 2009-10 to more than 880 kilowatt hours
per person in 2011-12, according to the country’s 12th five-year plan. But
the government has not yet announced the project’s boundaries, and
environmental experts fear it may touch on Sambhar Lake wetlands
protected under the international Ramsar Convention, and that it could also affect nearby villages and illegal settlements encroaching on the wetlands. The
company providing the land for the project controls 58,000 acres (90
square miles) in the area, and the catchment of Sambhar Lake covers 60
square miles, according to the Sambhar Master Plan prepared by the state government.
Sambhar
Lake is one of the largest salt-producing areas in India, and has been
used for salt production since the 1870s. The lake basin is spread at
the confluence of three districts of Rajasthan – Jaipur, Nagaur and
Ajmer – and is close to the fringes of the desert. The lake depends on rainwater supplies, which have been declining in the area
as a result of changing weather patterns and greater use of water by
the growing town of Sambhar, with 24,000 people, and by close to 100
small illegal settlements in the catchment area.
Over the past
several decades, large areas of land surrounding the lake have dried out
and no longer flood regularly. This is the land the government now
hopes to use to build the solar farm, Tandon said. Sambhar Lake, an important habitat for birds, particularly flamingos, is among 25 wetlands of international importance in India. India’s Wetlands Conservation and Management Rules 2010
prohibit the setting up of industries in flood areas or industrial
activity likely to have an adverse impact on wetland ecosystems,
according to a Ministry of Environment and Forests official. Such rules
may drive the final footprint of the solar project. Such a
project would have to be approved by 12 members of the Central Wetlands
Regulatory Authority including seven officials from key ministries such
as Environment and Forests, Water, and Agriculture, as well as five
environmentalists or other leading experts, the official said. Some
experts also fear that the proposed 20,000-acre footprint of the
project may need to be reduced to meet wetland rules, reducing the
target for power generation. Under government policies, about 5,000
acres of land is required for each 1,000 megawatts of solar energy
produced.
“It is likely that the solar power project may face a
space crunch due to existing encroachments around the catchment area of
the lake, hence reducing the area for the project site,” said Abhishek
Goyal, a New Delhi-based energy consultant for solar energy companies in
India. The government is expected over the next few months to
invite bids to carry out the project. Hindustan Salts Ltd. recently
invited bids for detailed feasibility studies and analysis of the
project, according to its website. India plans to seek $500 million in loans for the project from the World Bank
for the first 750 megawatt phase of the project, which would cost $1.2
billion, Minister of Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah said in a statement. In
the coming months, the government is expected to sign agreements to set
up similar solar facilities in Kharagoda (Gujarat), Kargil and Ladakh
(Jammu and Kashmir) under the country’sJawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, which aims to produce 20 gigawatts of solar power each year by 2022.
Sunny
India receives solar energy each year equivalent to nearly 5,000
trillion kilowatt hours per year, experts say – . So far, however, India
has only about 2,000 megawatts of grid-connected solar. A memorandum
to establish the Sambhar Lake project was signed in late January by six
Indian public-sector companies, the Ministry of Heavy Industries and
Public Enterprises, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and the
Ministry of Power. • Saket S. is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi and Rajasthan.
Source Thegurdian
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