In a previous article, I had highlighted the macro trends in energy use, the overarching consequences, and the macro-level responses we need to consider as a country. We must focus on national policy and international positioning ? what kind of role India and China have and should play in the world-wide efforts to conserve energy and preserve the environment. A close look at the types of rules and activities that the government should revise, remove, or create to encourage industries? and nations? fuel use is part of this process. We need to look at the way policies shape individual decisions ? to buy a diesel car, for example, for which fuel is comparatively cheap.
The approach matches most of the dialogue about energy and conservation: predictions about energy use and its consequences are generally delivered in the aggregate. In the World Energy Outlook 2007: energy flows are in the billions of btoes, imports and exports are in percentage of need, and the magnitude of energy use increase hidden in the percentage growth figures.
But behind these drily stated (yet ominous) predictions, lie everyday activities and decisions and everyday living experiences. In this article, I look at a different kind of approach to sustainability, one that looks more closely at individuals, the everyday decisions, and the power of small changes embedded in these acts. In the end, it will be the cumulation of many small decisions as much as any large polity-wide choices that will avert crisis.
India needs a micro-energy plan as much as a macro-strategy. It has to focus on averting climate change on two emissions fronts: not just carbon dioxide, but also particulate matter and smog. Both contribute to global warming. But it also has to focus on two decision-making fronts: polity-wide and individual-level.
The individual problem comes down to unwillingness as well as inability. Policy can shift both to change decisions.
Consider the unwillingness to choose the most efficient/least damaging technology. This is understandable in many ways. Environmental damage is an externality. People choose to buy diesel cars, and people suffer the increasingly thick smog blanketing Delhi. Do they suffer the smog and decide to buy a CNG rather than a diesel car? No ? why would they? The smog is public ? an externality from others? decisions ? and the benefits of lower-cost transport are private. There is no reason to be the first to give up the diesel when everybody else would share the benefits.
So the question is how to internalise this externality? This goes beyond reducing subsidies for more-polluting fuels, as I mentioned last time to actually increasing the costs of fuel use in proportion to its contribution to pollution. There are also rewards for emission reductions as in the clean development mechanism. India should actively support the implementation of the CDM by making the certification process streamlined while remaining credible.
Creating awareness and peer pressure can also help. Websites like Carbon Monitoring for Action (www.carma.org) are a step toward publicising power plants? contribution to global warming, for example, and have spurred greater attention to conservation and more efficient generation as consumers can see and benchmark the emissions profile. Websites alone are not the answer in a country with continuing digital divides such as India, nor is the focus on power plants alone necessarily the answer. But these kinds of initiatives are a start in revealing information that enables a little more scrutiny. Closer to home, pollution monitoring and transparent reporting could be as important a tool in changing willingness to use efficient/less polluting solutions as any law.
In the end, laws are harder to enforce than public opinion and media campaign.
Few would argue that people in rural areas would cook with wood or crop waste if they could cook with gas. In this sense development and sustainable development are mutually reinforcing. The spectre of climate change increases the pressure (which should be strong on development grounds anyway) to make cleaner-burning fuels available for rural cooking and heating. This requires a sensible fuel policy. The increased availability of gas must principally be used for the transport and rural cooking needs. Power should rely on clean coal technology which is now increasingly possible.
Ignorance also contributes to inability: people who do not know of efficient alternatives cannot choose them. This requires more than credible information in fine print on a leaflet. Marketing campaigns, similar to those done for vaccinations, would be useful.
Finally, measurement matters. People need to be able to quantify efficiency to choose the best.
Solutions include labelling or certification of energy efficiency, as well as investing in technology to quantify savings and efficiency. Lowering the costs of credibly quantifying energy efficiency also has spillover benefits for enabling and creating accountability for complying with energy conservation norms.
Individual compliance with norms cannot be monitored without better quantification of efficiency on real progress in conservation. We have no way to define success unless we can measure efficiency. So this is a fundamental first investment.
Sustainability affects the planet, regions, countries and individual lives. We need symmetry of action at multiple levels, both macro and micro.
?The author is a former senior bureaucrat. These are his personal views