Managing specific energy consumption and related emissions for power sector and major energy intensive industrial sectors of India

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most challenging problems, necessitating global action. India has voluntarily declared to reduce GHG intensity of its GDP by 20-25% during 2005-2020 and by 33-35% during 2005-2030. India has also implemented a market based initiative - perform, achieve and trade scheme for improving energy efficiency through reducing SEC in eight energy intensive sectors. This thesis aims at understanding the potential of reducing SEC and its implication on GHG and SO2 mitigation in Indian thermal power, cement and iron and steel sectors and analyse alternative policy scenarios for mitigation. A historical time series is generated at sector level for a period of 22 years and at LPS level for 325 LPSs for a period of 5 years. Future projections are done under BAU scenario and three mitigation scenarios for the years 2020 and 2030. IPCC guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories has been used for emissions estimation. This thesis develops three alternative policy scenarios based on plant level SEC reduction targets. An alternative target setting methodology has been proposed to that used in PAT target setting. A major characteristic of baseline analysis is the wide range of plant level SECs within each sector, mainly because of heterogeneous nature of sectors in terms of fuel, raw material, plant age, plant size, ownership and technologies etc. Analysis shows that plants have different performance levels and mitigation capacities due to such characteristics. Mean SEC in these three sectors has been declining continuously. Gas based power plants and cement plants perform very well in energy efficiency when compared internationally. Development of multiple baselines, strict targets to poor performers and negative targets to best performers are some of the key features of the alternative methodology. GHG emissions from these three sectors are expected to reach 2.4 billion tons and 4.3 billion tons by 2020 and 2030 respectively under BAU scenario.