INTRO
This is a kickoff effort for my intended series of posts on decarbonizing India.
The idea is to put down a series of well-researched blog posts that focus on emissions reductions for India, but from the perspective of a company that has been providing management consulting on cleantech to the Indian private sector for a decade. So, we are talking more of industry actionables and relatively less of government policy prescriptions.
The industry focus also means that there will be a low emphasis on the consumer side of CO2 emissions – that is, I will not be dwelling on how to make individuals reduce their carbon footprint, unless it is a question of how the industry can make it happen. I hope I’m making sense.
I plan to publish these posts on decarbonization at my company web site ( www.eai.in ), and as well as here at LinkedIn – to make it easy for those in this massive network to contribute.
Our specialty focus areas include 
The decarbonization business is complex (If you don’t believe me now, I’m prepared to wait until you finish reading this post).
So rather than get into an analysis-paralysis mode, I wished to kick things off in some way. And this post was the result.
We need a framework to understand decarbonization. This post tries to arrive at it, along with setting the overall context.
While what I have put down here are based on our work and knowledge (and some research last couple of days), I invite others to provide their feedback, identify gaps, punch holes etc., so I am able to improve this framework before starting off the actual research.
This post comprises the following sections:
- Carbonization
- A schematic for decarbonization
- Decarbonization avenues
- India’s current emission status
1. CARBONIZATION
Before we get on to decarbonization, it will be useful to first get a quick grip on carbonization, and what causes it.
While most discussions are termed decarbonization, the actual effort is for degreenhousegasification – a mouthful really, so we will stick to decarbonization, which sounds like a sweet little word in comparison.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is measured in CO2 equivalents, in order make it easy to understand and analyse. And for an additional reason – CO2 is the largest component responsible for global warming. But there are a few other noteworthy greenhouse gas fellows such as CH4, N2O etc., whose global warming potential (per unit mass) is much higher than that of CO2.
The world emits about 35 billion tons of CO2 every year (through human and industrial activities) and an additional 13-14 billion tons of CO2 equivalents of other greenhouse gases. Because of their much higher GW potential (per unit mass) compared to CO2, the actual emissions (by mass) of these other greenhouse gases is much lower than 13 billion tons.
But I’m making it complex. Allow me to make it easy to remember: globally, 3/4ths of global warming is from CO2 emissions, and a quarter from the rest of greenhouse gases. I do not have the equivalent split for India, but I have a hunch that it may not be very different.
Let’s now look at the sources of emissions for CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Sources of CO2 emission
- CO2 is released when you burn a hydrocarbon – whether the source was from under the ground (fossil – coal, oil, natural gas…) or from above (biomass, mainly).
- CO2 is also released when carbon that is sequestered (a fancy word for stored, though technically it means closer to “isolated”) in biomass such as crop waste gets converted to CO2 through microbial processes. And also from other organic waste (your used cotton clothes, for instance) when they rot in landfills and get converted to biogas through a process called anaerobic digestion – biogas is a mixture of CO2 and methane.
To a very large extent, the above two are the human-related avenues through which CO2 is emitted. I say to a very large extent because, there are others – humans also exhale CO2 (and so do plants at night) – but these do not matter (really) and I will hopefully get a chance sometime to explain why.
Sources of other GHG emissions
And so there are these other greenhouse gases, and these together contribute about 30% of the total CO2 equivalent as mentioned earlier. And who do we have here?
- Methane
- N2O
- CFC-12 (CCl2F2)
- HCFC-22 (CCl2F2)
- Sulfur Hexaflouride (SF6)
Methane and N2O are mainly released from both agricultural/livestock sectors and industrial sectors.
Methane emissions from livestock are significant, and these are from their burps and farts – I wish I could find more civilized words. Methane is also emitted as landfill gas, when organic matter is left to rot in landfills – this is a mix of CO2 and methane. Methane is also released through leaks in the natural gas distribution system.
N2O emissions happen from agriculture cultivation (from nitrogen left in the water in fields) and from industrial wastewater treatment. Essentially, wherever you have nitrogen left in the water for extended durations, you have N2O emissions.
CFCs. HCFCs and SF6 are all man made and are released through leaks from or disposal of these products (CFCs and HCFCs are found in aerosols, refrigerants, solvents; SF6 is mainly used in electrical insulations).
So, decarbonizing industry/commerce boils down to mainly the following:
- Reducing CO2 emissions from energy generation
- Reducing CO2 emissions from agricultural activities
- Reducing CH4 from agricultural and livestock activities, from gas leaks, and from landfills
- Reducing N2O emissions from agricultural and from industrial waste waters
- Reducing emissions of CFC, HCFC and SF6 from their use in products and product disposal
2. DECARBONIZATION SCHEMATIC
So how does one go about decarbonizing, when it appears that there are so many activities and sectors from which the GHGs are emitted?
While the actual work might be complex, surely we can at least conceptually start with a simple schematic? For a start, I look at the following dimensions:
- Firstly, identify the industry sectors to focus on for our decarbonization research
- Next, identify the decarb avenues, and identify specific solutions that can be used for each avenue.
- For the selected industry sectors, analyze and recommend the best possible avenue-solution combinations
- Finally, identify drivers that can accelerate implementation of these solutions.
This is a theoretical construct, but I’m hoping this will provide us with the required start and direction for our efforts.
- Sectors – the industry/commercial sector we wish to decarbonize
- Avenues – represent the main pathways for reducing carbon emissions; for eg.,using clean/low-carbon energy source
- Solutions – this is a more actionable version of avenues; eg.: solar energy (for low-carbon energy source).
- Drivers – many avenues/solutions today have challenges in implementation (else what’s everyone waiting for!). Examples could be Net Metering facility to incentivise rooftop solar power; capital subsidies for energy efficiency retrofits…
3. DECARBONIZATION AVENUES
For this post, let us focus a bit on the avenues.
We looked at the sources of carbonization earlier; decarbonization avenues (and solutions for these avenues) will need to be aligned to these emission sources.
In order that we get an organized picture of the avenues, I’m slotting them into the following structure.
In the above schematic. the term carbon is used to represent all greenhouse gas constituents. So, when we talk of a low carbon raw material, we also include in it materials that are less in (or all together avoid) other green house components too (such as less of SF6 or CFCs…).
Also, all components in the schematic may not be relevant for all sectors or applications. For instance, for the transport sector (a significant emitter of CO2), low carbon energy source (input stage) is the dominant one to consider, but low carbon raw materials actually play a much smaller role in contributing to CO2 emissions from transportation. Taking another example, when we consider the cement sector (one of the largest industrial contributors to CO2 in India and globally), there is little potential for energy recovery from cement or concrete even after a building or construction demolition, but significant potential exists for reuse of demolition waste in road construction etc.
With the above riders and notes, am providing inputs/explanations for each of the components mentioned in the schematic above.
INPUT
- Low carbon energy source – while renewable energy is what comes to mind right off, these need not always be renewable energy sources. It could also be a lower CO2 emitting fossil fuel. For instance, CNG cars emit much less CO2 per Km travelled compared to petrol/diesel cars. A different example is when the input energy used is actually energy that has been recovered from waste heat (say from a boiler), when it has a much lower net carbon emission compared to energy that comes straight from burning coal, for instance.
- Low carbon raw material input – A low carbon resource could either be one from a renewable source (say a biomass. which has a low net carbon footprint), it could be an alternative synthetic raw material that has lower carbon footprint (using fiber reinforced plastics instead of steel in cars could have a lower carbon footprint over the life cycle), or it could also be the same as what is currently used but from a recycled product (as a recycled raw material carries less embodied carbon compared to a virgin material).
PROCESS
- Resource efficiency – Using less material for making a unit of the same product, either through better design or by generating less waste.
- Low emission process – adopting processes that inherently have less emissions (for instance, using electricity for heating instead of using boilers to generate the same heat).
- Energy efficiency – using machinery or processes that use less energy for producing a unit material
- Energy recovery/use – recovery especially of heat and reusing it for heating or for power generation
- Carbon capture & storage / use – capturing the CO2 emitted and sequestering it either through storage or by using it in a product of value
OUTPUT/USE PHASE
- Demand management – Reducing the amount of product used by the end user (either industry or residential end user). This could be through use of technology (demand side management of power consumed for instance), or through awareness creation (reducing the menace of fast fashion for instance), a combination of both, or other means.
- Recycling – this could include all three – converting the waste back into the same product (recycling), converting it into a product of higher value (upcycling), or converting it into a product of lower value (downcycling).
- Reuse/extending use – Using the product for a longer period through refurbishment, repair or simply being a bit more wise
- Energy recovery – This is applicable for post use phase of products when they can neither be recycled nor be reused. Instead of sending these to the landfill (where the organic components could end up generating emissions), recovering energy from them through methods such as pyrolysis, gasification or even simple combustion could result in an overall less emissions from the product lifecycle.
4. INDIA’S CURRENT EMISSION STATUS
How much of greenhouse gases does India emit? While the objective of this assignment is not to get squeezed down trying to compute precise numbers, intelligence on key emission sources and sectors will be required.
My current analyses says that India’s CO2 emissions (in CO2 equivalent) is something on the following lines:
Total: 3.3 billion tons of CO2eq per annum, comprising both CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions (global is about 49 billion tons per annum of CO2eq). This is my estimate for 2019 (2020 was a crazy year, so we will ignore it in our estimates).
While there are different break-ups provided (some of them quite confusing!), the following is my first estimate, categorized on lines that seem to make sense to me at least, and more importantly, aligned to the purpose of this effort.
- From use of electricity & heat for industrial and commercial purposed: about 1.7 billion tons
- From use of electricity & heat for residential purposes: 0.4 billion tons
- From transport: about 0.3 billion tons
- From agriculture and livestock (non power emissions): about 0.7 billion tons
- Others (land use change, emissions from landfill and industrial waste, fugitive emissions): 0.2 billion tons
Another way to look at emissions is from sources. Based on my initial research, the following is my first estimate, in % (approx.):
- Coal: 65-70%
- Oil: 12-13%
- Natural gas: 5-7%
- Other sources: 15-20%
So
I’m hoping that we are able to fine tune some of the above data points as we go along.
While I do not intend to do big time number crunching to get precise data for the above, one of the objectives will indeed be to get a better handle of the emissions breakdown in a way that can enable specific actionables.
So there. Am at the end of the first draft of this post, and am looking forward to doing a bit more work on this tomorrow and also take inputs from all of you and try completing this by end of the week, so that I can march ahead on the main effort starting March.
I see the following way forward (stages and preliminary estimate for effort – proportion of total):
- Getting better estimates for the macro picture (5-10%)
- Identifying sectors to focus on (10%)
- Ensuring that we have done a good job of identifying all relevant avenues (5%)
- Arriving at the Sector – Avenues matrix (10%)
- A fairly detailed analyses of the current and emerging feasible solutions for the avenues (40%)
- Identifying key drivers for solution implementation by the sectors (10%)
- Summarising all the above work to provide actionable recommendations to Indian industry (15-20%)
The above estimates are preliminary, it may not go the way I envisage but at least now I seem to have what looks like a plan.
Look forward to your comments, feedback and suggestions. Thanks – Narasimhan, EAI.
Interesting web resources
- C2V – CO2 to Value – a comprehensive web resource providing insights on opportunities in converting CO2 into a range of useful products – fuels, chemicals, food & materials
- All about CO2 – CO2 Q&A – a unique resource providing answers to 100+ questions on the most talked about gas today.
- See also: Climate Startup Intelligence from CLIMAFIX
