India: the second most populous country in the world half without energy, in the hottest March in a century
Photo by Krusha Patel on Unsplash
The sweltering summer and severe shortages of coal for thermal use are triggering blackouts in large swaths of India, raising fears of a new crisis that could disrupt the world's second most populous and third largest economy in Asia.
A surge in electricity demand has prompted states including Punjab and Uttar Pradesh to the north and Andhra Pradesh to the south to cut off energy supplies. The outage , of up to eight hours in some places, is forcing customers to endure the heat or to seek out more expensive and polluting backup options, such as diesel generators.
While outages are not uncommon in India, this year's situation specifically points to a "looming energy crisis," said Shailendra Dubey, president of the All India Power Engineers Federation, a advocacy group. Blackouts caused by shortage of coal, the fossil fuel that accounts for 70% of India's electricity generation, are threatening to hamper the $ 2.7 trillion economy that is trying to get all its engines started after exiting. from a record contraction caused by the pandemic. They are also fueling inflation at a time when policy makers are struggling to rein in runaway energy prices fueled by the Russian war in Ukraine.
Painting an even more dramatic picture, the Indian electricity authorities noted that coal stocks stood at 22.52 million tonnes as of April 18, while normally at this time of year they should be nearly 67 million tonnes. In other words, coal stocks have fallen by a third of their usual levels.
"Thermal power plants across the country are grappling with coal shortages as energy demand in states has increased and many are unable to bridge the supply-demand gap due to insufficient coal stocks in power plants. thermals, ”AIPEF President Shailendra Dubey said in a statement released by ABP.
Given this low level of coal, many fear that a dramatic stagflationary shock could occur, causing a price explosion and thus fueling social insecurity in a densely populated country with over 1.3 billion inhabitants.
Small and medium-sized companies, which are the basis of the Indian productive fabric, could be severely hit, going into crisis and placing even more misery in a country that should instead have grown by 9.5% this year.
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The article India: the second most populous country in the world half without energy, in the hottest March in a century comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/india-il-secondo-paese-piu-popoloso-al-mondo-per-meta-senza-energia-nel-marzo-piu-caldo-da-un-secolo/ on Fri, 22 Apr 2022 07:00:45 +0000.