Vivek Karandikar and Ashish Rana1 Reliance Industries Ltd., Mumbai, India
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Future of Energy Options for India in an Interdependent World Vivek Karandikar and Ashish Rana1 Reliance Industries Ltd., Mumbai, India Abstract With the economic growth of India set to take off, the energy demand is forecast to rapidly mount in next 25 to 50 years. This paper probes deeper, as to what such growing demand would mean for energy supply. A new bottom-up integrated energy system model has been indigenously developed. The detailed nature of the model and its unique feature of including both the transformation sectors - electricity generation and refining - allow a wide variety of scenario studies. The model is calibrated to year 2000 and runs simulations to 2050. The paper presents an outline of the model structure and describes methodology of demand projections for each sector given the exogenous key drivers - GDP and demographics. It presents the simulation results of future energy mix, electricity mix, transport sector, and Commissions under a reference and three alternate scenarios - exploring full potential of domestic energy resources for electricity, efficiency improvement in transport and combined transport scenarios. Lastly, the paper makes three assertions on topical issues about future of India ’s energy options. One, the role of nuclear in India ’s electricity sector could be quite meaningful. Second, energy efficiency needs major thrust by reinforcing conservation policies and gaining access to advanced technology. Third, even without considering policies to explicitly target carbon emission reduction, a well-designed energy policy could define the future low emissions trajectory for India. L'avenir d'Options d'Energie pour Inde dans un Monde Interdependant Avec la croissance economique d'Inde est sur le point de commencer, la demande d'energie est prevue pour etre rapidement d'augmenter dans a cote de 25 a 50 annees. Ce papier de la recherche sonde plus profond, quant a ce que telle demande croissante signifierait pour la provision d'energie. Un nouveau modele fundamental a ete indigenement developpe. La nature detaillee du modele et sa caracteristique unique y compris les deux les secteurs de transformation - la generation d'electricite et raffinage - permet une grande variete d'etudes de scenario. Le modele est calibre a l'annee 2000 et court des simulations a 2050. Ce papier de la recherche decrit la structure et la methodologie de modele de projections de demande pour chaque secteur quand on a donne les criterions fondamental exogenes- PIB et demographique. Il presente les resultats de melange d'energie, le melange d'electricite, le secteur de transport, et emissions de CO2 sous une niveau de la base et trois scenarios - explorant le potentiel plein de ressources d'energie domestiques pour l'electricite, Amelioration d'efficacite dans le transport et les options de transport combinees. Dernierement, le papier de la recherche fait trois affirmations sur les problemes d'actualite. L'un, le role de nucleaire dans le secteur d'electricite d'Inde pourrait etre tout a fait significatif. La seconde, efficacite d'energie a besoin de la poussee specialisent en renforcant les politiques de conservation et l'acces a la technologie avancee. Le tiers, meme sans considerer des politiques de carbone explicites, une politique d'energie de puits-congu pourrait definir la trajectoire d'emissions basse future pour Inde. 1 Corresponding Author ([email protected]). Contributions of other members of modeling team, Prasanna K. Dani, Ravikumar P., and Sanjay U. Kumar are duly acknowledged. Future of Energy Options for India in an Interdependent World Vivek Karandikar and Ashish Rana Reliance Industries Ltd., Mumbai, India 1. Introduction Strong macroeconomic performance of India in the recent years is a result of the economic reforms, which started in India in 1991 (Srinivasan and Tendulkar, 2003). While some experts assert that the structural break from the past economic growth pattern began much earlier in 1980 rather than 1991 (Nayyar, 2006), the 1991 crisis resulted in a greater focus and a medium-term approach in search of a durable solution to the problems of slow growth and inflation and vulnerability on the balance of payments (Lahiri, 2006). The non-recurrence of a balance of payments crisis, a fiscal crisis or high inflation volatility, has helped create an enabling environment for a far-reaching transformation of the economy of the last 15 years. Recent studies show that growth of India ’s services sector can be attributed to the reforms carried out in the 1990s besides the structural changes that have led to increase in usage of services by other sectors and lower tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade (Banga, 2005). The importance of energy sector for economic growth is well established. A recent report from the Planning Commission of India mentions that in order to achieve a growth of between 8 and 9%, one of the major challenges is provision of infrastructure and electricity. It aptly points out that universal recognition of shortage of electric power and unreliability of power supply are a drag on the pace of India ’s development (Planning Commission, 2006). In view of the demand for energy set to grow due to greater pull from the economic development needs, the options for primary energy supply from the domestic resources can pose constraint. The evidence and expert opinion, however, suggest that there are plentiful resources, although there are several obstacles in realizing the full potential. This paper investigates some of the implications of fully realizing the domestic energy resource potential for the energy supply and demand situation. 2. Methodology Given the complex nature of the energy sector, a quantitative model of the integrated energy sector, with primary supply options linked to the various end use sectors through energy transformation sectors as a single system, is an extremely useful tool to study a variety of scenarios. The most attractive features of such tools is that by depicting the systems under study, these tools can quantify the effects of certain variables on a range of other variables at the same time. The strength of large-scale simulation models lies in the fact that these can accommodate a wide variety of variables, ranging from technology, 1 policy to behavioral variables required to capture the dynamics of the societal and economic systems. Integrated Energy System Model is a bottom-up cost optimization model built for this study. Cost, defined as total discounted system cost, includes the investment cost, variable O&M cost as well as resource cost, is minimized subject to several constraints, depicting the system behaviour. The basic constraint is equilibrium condition under which the supply of a fuel equals its total end-use demand. In other words, the total end- use demand must be met and requisite investment for creating supply is done. Therefore, different levels of demand have different cost implications. In this model energy demand comes from 6 end-use sectors as Agriculture, Industry, Transport, Residential, Commercial and Others. Among the end-use sectors, transport sector is represented in detail and fuel selection for vehicles is endogenous. The final energy demand is in the form of electricity, coal, various petroleum products, and natural gas. The transformation sectors - electricity and refinery - which convert the primary fuels into usable energy forms, are modeled in detail. In electricity sector, 20 technologies representing all major technologies - Coal (Conventional/Supercritical; Domestic/ Imported); IGCC (Domestic / Imported Coal/Petcoke); Hydro; Pumped Hydro; Natural Gas (Domestic / Imported / Coal Bed Methane / Underground Coal Gasification-based Gas); Nuclear; Wind (Onshore/ Offshore); Solar; Integrated Solar Combined Cycle; Biomass Gasification/Combustion - and their various characteristics such as plant load factor (PLF), auxiliary consumption, capital cost are considered. Refinery module is built with considerable detail of the refinery process. It is for the first time that in the framework of system-wide optimization detailed modeling of refinery sector is undertaken. Five marker crudes are taken to represent the entire spectrum of crudes available in the market. Existing capacities of various refinery units such as Crude distillation, Catalytic cracking, Hydro cracking, Thermal cracking, Visbreaking, Coking, Hydrogen Unit, Reformer, etc. in India in 2000 are estimated from industry sources. Other technologies considered in the model for the future years along with the existing ones are Solid Deasphalting, Alkylation Unit, and Flexicoking Unit. Each crude type produces streams in different proportions, based on its assay, and of different quality attributes of sulfur content etc. Similarly, yield patterns of individual refinery units is also defined as per the industry standards. The streams produced through the various units are blended to make the final products as per the quality specification, where defined. In addition, purchased additives, ethanol in case of Motor Spirit (MS) and Gas-to-liquids (GTL) and Biodiesel in case of High Speed Diesel (HSD), are also considered for blending to meet the quality specs. Among the final products, MS and HSD have to meet the quality specifications for sulfur. 2 3. Demand projection End-use sector demand is the primary input requirement to the bottom-up optimization models. There are two steps in finding the energy demand in each sector. In the first step, the demand in physical units, say