The country needs an energy revolution to ensure both economic development and environmental sustainability, said Prof Prem Chand Pandey of IIT Bhubaneswar here on Friday.
Addressing a national conference on Sustainable Energy, Micro and Smart grid Technologies, organized by the SOA University, Prof Pandey informed that while India recorded the fourth largest energy consumption in the world, it is also the third most polluting country in terms of carbon dioxide emission as 75 to 80 per cent of its electricity is generated using fossil fuel. The global trend today is to evolve a zero carbon technology or carbon free-energy generation. He suggested that sources of renewable energy could be geothermal energy along with solar, wind and tidal energy. “Being cost effective, reliable, sustainable and environment friendly, geothermal power has the potential to help mitigate global warming if widely deployed in place of fossil fuels,” he suggested.
He further informed the National Action Plan on Climate Change has recommended that 10 per cent of the country’s total energy generation should be sourced from renewable energy by 2015 and should be raised to 20 per cent by 2020. Pointing out that the thermal generation of energy pollutes the atmosphere with serious climatic and environmental implications, Prof Pandey said it leads to rise in sea level and contributes to premature deaths in urban areas.