Sonam Tsomo prepares
dinner on her electric cooker at her home in Udmaroo in Ladakh’s Nubra Valley. A
micro-hydropower unit supplies electricity to the village for six hours every
evening. Photo: Harikrishna Katragadda/Greenpeace
This tiny village in Ladakh might be frozen in time, but its initiative to
harness renewable energy has led to all-round empowerment
“Stupid TV,” Rigzen Tsomo mutters in the local Bodhi language as
she taps her black & white TV set hard enough to get the reception back.
“There…,” she smiles and returns to her seat.
“Main samay hoon…,” says a man on the screen. “It’s
Mahabharat!” I shout in excitement and turn to Rigzen. She looks at me,
nods and quickly returns to watching the serial.
Udmaroo village in Ladakh is a civilization away from
civilization. After a nine-hour journey from the capital Leh that involves
trekking across two mountains, crossing a flower valley and a river, one reaches
Udmaroo, a bright green triangle located at 10,320ft. This tiny village of 90
farmer families might be frozen 25 years back in time, but in terms of energy
generation, it is at least 10 years ahead of all of us.
Ushering in hydropower
In 2005, the villagers put away their smoky kerosene lamps and a
small diesel generator gifted to them by the Army, and approached the Ladakh
Ecological Development Group to help them move ahead. Coal-based electricity was
never an option for this remote village far away from the national grid. So, the
group began to assess the villagers’ needs and feasibility of various types of
renewable energy. Within three years, in 2008, Udmaroo was basking in the glow
of electricity generated from a micro-hydro power plant installed in a glacier
stream above the village.
Empowerment
Though just a power plant, in no time, it became a matter of
pride, a source of income and a generator of happiness for the people of
Udmaroo. Households got electricity to run their appliances. Children could play
music and watch TV. A group of women, who bought an oil extraction machine to
crush mustard seeds and apricot kernels, paid Rs.15 an hour for electricity and
sold their hourly produce for Rs.80. Excess oil was packaged and sold to the
Army for Rs.300. Another women’s group bought a pulping machine, making 750
bottles of apricot jam every year. The men’s carpentry group doubled its income
after it purchased an electric wood carving machine. While households paid Rs.90
per month, widows were given free electricity because they have no source of
income. And even after all this, the village still had surplus electricity.
To understand what renewable energy is doing in a country like
India where 300 million people still have no access to basic electricity,
Udmaroo couldn’t explain it better. For the villagers, the hydropower plant
didn’t just light up homes. It brought a community together. It gave people the
key to control their lives and the power to choose how and when their resources
are used. It helped the village save Rs.1.2 lakh that it used to spend every
year to buy diesel for the generator. For the government, it is about saving
money that it would have spent on importing coal to meet everybody’s energy
needs. For environmentalists, it is about saving the climate. For human rights
groups, it is about human well-being and poverty reduction. For feminists, it is
about women’s empowerment.
Across India
Gone are the days when renewable energy meant dim solar lanterns.
Small-scale renewable energy power plants are now cheaper, more reliable and
more efficient. In Durbuk, in Ladakh, a solar power plant is powering 347
households, a clinic, a school and some government offices. In Tamil Nadu, a
panchayat purchased a windmill that is not only providing electricity to
the entire village but is also selling the surplus to State utilities and
earning profit. In Bihar, a company named Husk Power Systems is using rice husk
to generate electricity and supplying it to 250 villages.
Unlike coal that kills everything around it, renewable energy
plays a transformational role by uplifting those who were earlier languishing in
the dark. But the irony is that clean energy risks being typecast as a poor
man’s fuel when it should be everyone’s first choice.
India is currently the world’s third largest carbon emitter.
According to the Copenhagen Accord, which India signed along with 167 other
countries, 80 per cent of the world’s proven coal, oil and natural gas reserves
must remain in the ground in order to avoid warming the planet beyond the
internationally agreed limit of 2° Celsius rise in average temperature. To
achieve this, renewable energy must come up on a large scale and not as isolated
stories of miracles.
Depleting reserves
From an economic point of view, no one needs proof that India is
facing a power crisis. Coal reserves are depleting and getting expensive. Nearly
21 major plants in the country are facing severe coal shortages. In the last
fiscal, India imported over 50 million tonnes of the fossil fuel, widening the
country’s fiscal deficit to further dangerous levels.
From a social point of view, the government had promised to
deliver electricity to the entire population by 2012. But considering that
providing electricity to all means providing it for 24 hours of 365 days and not
four hours in a day, the government missed the target by a long shot. Worse, it
was the same year when India faced the world’s biggest power blackout.
Renewable energy is the need of the hour and it is capable of
delivering what India needs. But will we, like the people of Udmaroo, realise it
in time?
(Ramapati Kumar is campaign manager, Climate and Energy,
Greenpeace India. June 5 is World Environment Day.)
