INDIA & ENERGY Mix: Empowering WOMEN

INDIA & ENERGY Mix: Empowering WOMEN

According to a recent study, about 1.1billion people worldwide are dependent on Renewable Energy. And, renewable energy will play a leading role both in developed and developing countries in coming future. Research on various energy sectors on the usage of energy suggest that Women have an important role to play in sustainable energy development. Renewable energy and gender equality are preconditions for sustainable development and for the management of climate change; this is envisioned by SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA 2030 of the United Nations.

Given the critical role of energy in enabling sustainable development, efforts are on for sustainable energy delivery. A number of small-scale solutions that increase women’s opportunities and enhance sustainability have recently been implemented by UNDP-UNEP PEI, and UN Women. Their aim is to make climate and environment policies more gender sensitive and bring women to a clean energy path and include them in climate resilient initiatives. These are also combined with actions at the political level and linked with national policy processes in order for structural reforms. The basic objectives are:

1.   Involvement of WOMEN in decision making and to play leadership role while promoting decentralized renewable energy access and reap benefit from renewable energy for economic empowerment.

2.   Promotion of Women’s productive use of Renewable Energy and reduce their time dedicated to unpaid care and domestic work.

3.   Applying a cross-sectional approach to gender while formulating climate and energy policy and build capacity integrating gender.

4.   Remove barriers to investment, create equal opportunities for women entrepreneurship, employment and access to technology.

5.   Funding the implementation of gender-sensitive energy and climate solutions by influencing a country’s budget process.

INDIA IN ENERGY SECTOR

Fossil fuels are non-renewable, that is, they draw on finite resources that will eventually dwindle, becoming too expensive or too environmentally damaging to retrieve. In contrast, the many types of renewable energy resources-such as wind and solar energy-are constantly replenished and will never run out. The role of new and renewable energy has been assuming increasing significance in recent times with the growing concern for India's energy security. Energy self-sufficiency was identified as the major driver for new and renewable energy in the country in the wake of the two oil shocks of the 1970s.

India’s Energy Mission:

·        Energy Security: Less dependent on oil imports through development and deployment of alternate fuels (hydrogen, bio-fuels and synthetic fuels) and their applications to contribute towards bridging the gap between domestic oil supply and demand;

·        Clean Power: Increase in the share of clean power, that is, Renewable (bio, wind, hydro, solar, geothermal & tidal) electricity to supplement fossil fuel based electricity generation;

·        Energy Availability and Access: Supplement energy needs of cooking, heating, motive power and captive generation in rural, urban, industrial and commercial sectors;

·        Energy Affordability: Cost-competitive, convenient, safe, and reliable new and renewable energy supply options; and

·        Energy Equity: Per-capita energy consumption at par with the global average level by 2050, through a sustainable and diverse fuel- mix.

India has committed to generate at least 40% of its electricity from non-fossil sources by 2030. Currently India accounts for 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. India has to play an important role in achieving the goal of halting the effects of climate change by restricting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Off late Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has played a dynamic role in the global energy sector post Paris Accord, post COP23 & exit of US President Trump from the agreement. As per PM Modi, India is ready to go beyond Paris Agreement, “We must leave for our future generations a climate wherein they can breathe clean air and have a healthy life.” On his instruction, the Govt of India has committed to reduce India’s dependence on fossil fuels, and recognized the severe effects of carbon emission pollution on human health.

Today, India stands on the brink of an energy revolution. In just the past year, the country added 11.3 giga watts (GW) of renewable energy capacity, making critical progress towards its ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable energy generation by 2022. Already India has attained global 4th and 6th position in global Wind and Solar Power installed capacity.

“India's energy future has four pillars - Energy access, energy efficiency, energy sustainability and energy security” told PM Modi in the 16th International Energy Forum. Energy in general and hydrocarbons in particular are an important part of my vision for India’s future. India needs energy which is accessible and affordable to the poor. It needs efficiency in energy use, he said.

Modiji stressed upon access to clean cooking fuel which is very important to improve standards of living. Women benefit the most from it. It reduces indoor pollution, and hardships faced in collecting bio-mass and fire-wood. It gives them increased time for further self-development, and taking up additional economic activities.

PM Modi in his ambitious energy plans for India has got a perfect executioner Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan, the young & dynamic Cabinet Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship. Mr. Pradhan has been instrumental in visualizing and implementing the flagship plan of PM Modi, the UJJWALA Yojana that is aimed to provide clean LPG cooking connections to 80 million poor households, out of which 35 million connections have already been provided in less than two years, thanks to a visionary Prime Minister and Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan and team.

In a bid to shift to BS Six fuels by April 2020, which is equivalent to the EURO Six standards, the oil refineries are under massive up-gradation to meet the clean fuel deadline.

In order to address the future energy consumption needs, as India moves ahead fast towards a global economy with a huge energy market, the Modi Govt has revamped up-stream policies and regulations and brought in transparency and competitiveness in the sector through the launch of Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy. The bidding criteria have been changed to revenue sharing, which will help reduce government intervention. The Govt is now encouraging private participation across the entire oil and gas value chain from up-stream production to down-stream retail where Mr. Pradhan has been playing a leading role.

Mr. Pradhan who has now taken up the mantle of Clean Energy accessible for all, says, “Energy is an important component for any economy. India being the 3rd largest energy consumer in the World imports nearly 300MMT of carbon molecules every year. Our challenge is to lower this import volume, enhance self sufficiency & lower our carbon footprints. We are working to expand India’s gas-pipeline network to nearly more than half of the country & are pushing to establish India as a Gas based economy, with domestic as well as foreign investments & also enhancing E&P activities to augment our own hydrocarbon.”He further adds, “While LNG is a viable alternative to conventional hydrocarbons with much lower carbon emissions. Bio-fuels are another revolutionary energy source which can help address our energy needs in a sustainable manner, while also providing a suitable solution to issues of waste disposal. Under the visionary leadership of Hon. PM Shri Narendra Modi ji, India has not only secured new energy ties it has also strengthened the old ones. Today our country needs individuals who can take up the responsibility on a personal level to help & support India’s energy market. Empowering the bottom of the pyramid has the potential to change the complete character of the nation. If all of us come together & put our thoughts and energy to address issues related to India’s energy security, we can help push the country into a better & sustainable future.” 

On his recent visit to UAE, Mr. Pradhan was quite certain that India’s energy mix will be substantially complemented by renewable energy and the country is going to generate around 175 GW of energy from such sources like solar, wind, bio-CNG, bio-fuel to small hydro projects.

CLEAN GREEN RENEWABLE ENERGY & WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

A typical life of a woman in rural India starts with the crack of dawn to collect firewood for cooking. She walks long distance from her home to reach the closest patch of forest land, spends lot of time collecting the firewood and return, risking her life & modesty (sometime) on the way back home. She then spends an hour cooking on a smoky clay stove, with equal amounts of firewood and dung cakes, smoke from burning such fuels causes alarming household pollution and adversely affects the health of Women & children causing several respiratory diseases/ disorders, after which she begins cleaning the utensils, laboriously scrubbing the copious amounts of char left behind by the biomass fuels. The afternoon is spent preparing dung cakes for the next day.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey predicts that, women in India work nine hours a day on average, compared to seven hours a day for men. Most of this time is spent on unpaid activities, such as cooking in unhealthy conditions, household work and care-giving for the elderly or for children, leaving little time for paid labour or social and leisure activities. This unpaid labour by rural women is an important lever in closing a larger gender gap. The huge burden of unpaid labour placed on rural women’s time is a manifestation of gender disparity in rural India, stemming from strongly enforced gender norms. It ultimately leads to their lower socio-economic status in society, quite opposed to the Women Empowerment move. With 80% of women in rural India use free biomass fuels such as firewood, dung cakes, and agricultural waste as their primary cooking fuel that takes time to gather and prepare, and are highly inefficient to cook with, they are deprived of an economic freedom.

A rescue for them lies with clean energy applications for cooking, such as LPG, electric cookers, and solar cookers. The same strategy has long been overlooked or not taken up seriously over the years. Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) aims to safeguard the health of women & children by providing them with a clean cooking fuel – LPG, so that they don’t have to compromise their health in smoky kitchens or wander in unsafe areas collecting firewood. This UJJWALA campaign, has so far changed the lives of 5,63,37,622 households by providing PMUY LPG connections. It gave the houses a clean environment, healthy life and saved enough time for the women to venture into other economically sustainable and capacity building activities. In a recent study by some NGOs, it was seen that various renewable energy companies are now engaging these women in groups to sell their renewable energy items like Solar light, stoves, etc in the rural market giving them an earning potential and becoming self sufficient, thus getting empowered. 

But, there are pros and cons of every yojana or planning. Some questions can arise regarding the refilling of the LPG and the cost. But then it can be resolved too. The prices of refill can be subsidized for the BPL families and increasing the purchasing power of the families. Incidentally, the whole idea of UJJWALA was to lessen the pollution leading to healthy life and reducing the time of cooking thereby empowering women & providing ample time for the child to get education. This in turn will lead to their economic growth. One should not forget the fact that, the path to women empowerment in a diverse country like India is a gradual process, with degrees of inequality varying from one region to another. Rural India is more hard-hit in this aspect and suffers from the many negatives that it brings. It is, therefore, pertinent to focus on a holistic, well-thought out, and far-sighted policy that focuses not only on the accrued benefits of empowerment to women, but to entire households.

Though India’s Renewable Energy target is 175GW by 2022, Shri Pradhan acknowledges India's consumption of petroleum would be high and dependent on oil for some more years. Speaking at a session on 'The New Energy Equation' at the World Economic Forum 2018, he said that PM Narendra Modi was conscious about India's energy needs and the requirement of variations in the country's energy basket. Since India is investing heavily on solar, wind, bio-fuels and ethanol bio-CNG (one coming up in Western Odisha: production of ethanol from thatch a waste product of agriculture), Mr. Pradhan is confident of overcoming the hardships in due course.

But, as it seems India is definitely on the path of an energy mix situation where renewable energy is going to play vital part. It should not be forgotten that India is one of the pioneer countries to propagate International Solar Alliance that aims to harness solar energy for the benefit of member countries in mutual beneficial manner.

Prabin Kumar Padhy

B.Sc(Chemistry), MBA, LLB, SAP HR

Managing Trustee

E5 Business Solutions Trust

(E5: Energy – Education – Empowerment – Enterprising - E-Media)

Twitter: @PrabinKP

LinkedIN: www.dhirubhai.net/in/prabinkp