OpEd: What India and Pittsburgh Have In Common

3 Jun 2017

I think we all live with some level of tunnel vision. We live locally and too often are unaware of what is going on in the wider world despite our access to the reportage of world events.

I thought about my own tunnel vision of the wider world when I did my typical Saturday morning thing: got a cup of coffee from my local Starbucks and read in the New York Times the story: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green.

The gist of the story is that India WAS planning on building a whole lot of coal-fired plants but are cancelling many of them because (a) their current plants are operating at only 60% capacity and (B) they are relying more on renewables such as solar power.

India, so says the story, is also decreasing its annual coal production from 660 million tons to 600 million tons -- down 10%.

Clearly, the world is embracing renewable energy technology. It appears to be making sense in India. It even makes sense to the mayor of Pittsburgh in the U.S. In another story, it says that Pittsburgh already has 13,000 jobs in the renewable energy industry. Says the story, "Pittsburgh today is increasingly rebuilding around greener medical complexes, research university and tech offices." Less need for coal, for sure.

I haven't been to Pittsburgh since I worked for Eaton Corp. as a field engineer about 20 years ago. And I have yet to visit India. But this morning over a cup of coffee at my local Starbucks, my world view just got a wee bit bigger.

Top Comments

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shabaz over 8 years ago

There was a short but interesting article in the news today,
Solar, wind and nuclear power each provide more electricity than gas and coal combined for first time | The Independent
apparently yesterday for a period of time energy generated by renewables alone accounted for 50.7% of UK demand, i.e. surpassing coal/gas/nuclear.
The period of time was possibly not long though!
The 50.7% was broken down into the following power levels:
wind: 9.5GW
solar: 7.3GW
biomass and hydro: 1.9GW

Of the remainder 49.3%,
nuclear: 8.2GW
gas: 7.2GW
coal: zero
other (not sure, could be imports?): 2.8GW

I wonder if the national energy organizations have live plotting of this data, or an API. It would be an interesting thing to see. I will ask National Grid in the UK if I can find an e-mail address.. they seem to only address enquiries by letter, not e-mail..
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shabaz over 8 years ago

There was a short but interesting article in the news today,
Solar, wind and nuclear power each provide more electricity than gas and coal combined for first time | The Independent
apparently yesterday for a period of time energy generated by renewables alone accounted for 50.7% of UK demand, i.e. surpassing coal/gas/nuclear.
The period of time was possibly not long though!
The 50.7% was broken down into the following power levels:
wind: 9.5GW
solar: 7.3GW
biomass and hydro: 1.9GW

Of the remainder 49.3%,
nuclear: 8.2GW
gas: 7.2GW
coal: zero
other (not sure, could be imports?): 2.8GW

I wonder if the national energy organizations have live plotting of this data, or an API. It would be an interesting thing to see. I will ask National Grid in the UK if I can find an e-mail address.. they seem to only address enquiries by letter, not e-mail..
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rscasny over 8 years ago in reply to shabaz

Shabaz,

The Independent article is interesting. I shouldn't be surprised, but I was. I think in the US my perceptions have been skewed by US culture and politics. Too often we think of power as a 1-source resource. But the decentralized power grid is the way of the future with all the power optimization and data analytics making it happen.

I caught this article on the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/e230d280-15e2-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e

Look at all the wind power purchases by Google!
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