Powering India: feeding an insatiable need


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India Rural Electrification faces energy access gaps as the power grid favors cities, leaving villages under 12-hour electricity supply, frequent load shedding, and local impacts from coal pollution and hydroelectric dams.

 

The Situation Explained

Providing reliable, affordable electricity in rural India to narrow urban-rural gaps and reduce coal ash and dam harms.

  • 78 million lack grid connections despite capacity growth
  • Villages average under 12 hours of daily power supply
  • Cities receive 22-24 hours; stark urban-rural disparity
  • Rural areas bear coal ash and large dam externalities
  • Prioritize microgrids, solar, and distribution upgrades

 

Like most countries, India's electricity is distributed to its population via a large, centralized grid system.

 

Through the construction of thermal power plants and large hydroelectric dams, the Government has added 150MW of installed generating capacity to this grid in the 62 years since independence, yet such priority is given to feeding the insatiable demands of the cities that 78 million people in India are still living without an electricity connection.

Yet a connection to the electricity grid far from assures a dependable supply of power for those living in rural areas. A recent report by Greenpeace India, Still Waiting, surveyed a tier A city, a tier B city and three villages in five states across India, and found that, while the cities received between 22 and 24 hours of electricity supply per day, all the villages surveyed had a power supply of less than 12 hours a day on average. In the villages, electricity is used for pumping drinking water, irrigating crops and keeping wild animals at bay, in addition to lighting and for small industry.

To compound their problems, the rural population are often the ones who must suffer the local environmental and health impacts of centralized power plants, such as the choking grey ash produced by burning coal, or the inhospitable and marshy land created by impounding large water bodies in reservoirs.

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