Decentralized Sustainable Energy Planning For Tumkur District, India

Abstract

The energy-planning involves finding a set of sources and conversion devices so as to meet the energy requirements/demands of all the activities in an optimal manner. This could occur at centralized or decentralized level. The current pattern of commercial energy oriented development, particularly focused on fossil fuels and centralized electricity, has resulted in inequities, external debt and environmental degradation. The current status is largely a result of adoption of centralized energy planning (CEP), which ignores the energy needs of rural areas and the poor and has further contributed to environmental degradation due to fossil fuel consumption and forest degradation. CEP does not pay attention to the variations in socio-economic and ecological factors of a region, which influence success of any intervention. Decentralized energy planning (DEP) provides an opportunity to address the energy needs of poor as well as promote efficient utilization of resources. The DEP mechanism takes into account various available resources and demands in a region. DEP, in the Indian context, could be at several scales namely district, block, panchayats (cluster of villages) and village level. Energy planning at the village level is the lowest level of the application of decentralized planning principle. A village constitutes a cluster of households with distinct geographic boundary consisting of settlement, agricultural land, water bodies and any other land category, in most parts of India. Further, the village level plans must be prepared within the limits set by a panchayat, a block or a district level plans, for the sum total of various village plans must correspond to a panchayat (local council), block (or taluka), or district level plan. A panchayat is the lowest administrative unit consisting of a cluster of villages and an elected body to administer developmental activities. A block (or taluka) consists of a cluster of panchayats and a district consists of a cluster of blocks. The main hypothesis for this study is that centralized energy planning has lead to excessive dependence on fossil fuels and import of petroleum, leading to concerns on environment and energy security and finally neglect of the energy needs of the rural communities and poor in particular. DEP could meet the local energy needs particularly in rural areas, protect environment and promote a self reliant and sustainable energy path. In this study, methodology for adopting energy planning from grassroot or village to district level is explored. The study adopts and compares the DEP approach of moving from village (Ungra), to panchayat (Yedavani), to block (Kunigal) and finally to district (Tumkur) level. Aims and objectives of research . • To review energy planning approaches adopted in India . • To evaluate models and methods for DEP at different scales; Village, Panchayat, District and State levels . • To develop a sustainable and decentralized energy planning approach . • To analyze the sustainable decentralized planning approach using multiple objective goal programming model and develop sustainable energy mix for meeting energy needs at village, panchayat, block and district level . • To assess the implications of sustainable and decentralized energy planning from the context of socio-economic and environmental concerns. The central theme of the research work is to prepare an optimized area-based decentralized energy plan to meet the energy needs, incorporating all potential alternate energy sources and end-use devices at least-cost to the economy and environment. One of the environmental goals addressed is to minimize or avoid CO2 emissions to address climate change. Study area selected for DEP is Tumkur district of Karnataka state, India and the DEP is carried out for the year 2005 and 2020. Advanced operation research technique, goal programming, is used to solve the large and complicated energy system problem having multiple conflicting goals.