The governments before never took up
the battle seriously. But the only way out of perpetual shortage and the
subsidy cycle is to make rainwater and solar power harvesting mandatory in the
capital.
In this season of daily controversies, one of the
truly historic decisions taken by the Aam Aadmi Party government went virtually
unnoticed. Possibly for the first time, a government in India has decided to
sacrifice an investment of Rs 60 crore and surrender prime real estate of 60
acres to secure a river.
The decision to remove India’s largest bus depot
from the Yamuna riverbed is truly game-changing because the previous government
was in no mood to let go of the land it had temporarily gained access to for
accommodating the buses required for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Instead of vacating the area that comes under Zone
'O' where no urbanization is allowed as per the Delhi Master Plan, the Sheila
Dikshit government had asked the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) last year to
initiate the process of changing its land use to transportation. This would have
remained yet another brazen instance of how land grab on the Yamuna riverbed
gets regularized but for Arvind Kejriwal’s intervention.
The new chief minister expressed helplessness
that his government could not remove the more permanent constructions – the
Akshardham temple or the Games village, for example -- but assured that his
government would not allow any building close to the river in the future. This
was not even on his list of 17 promises.
But this bold step will not be enough to revive
the Yamuna, though. Only half of Delhi’s 2000 MLD sewage can be treated in the
city’s 32 sewage treatment plants most of which do not even work to capacity.
Kejriwal will have to master the will and resources to gradually reduce this
load of untreated human waste flowing unchecked into the river.
The new government’s green tests also include
finding sustainable remedies to the city’s water and power needs. Purchasing
expensive power from the grid to meet the demands of cheap power will only make
the subsidy bill unmanageable. Channeling dam waters from far-flung hinterland
to compensate for the sinking aquifers will only fuel inter-state wars.
Like every mega city, Delhi’s only solution lies
in rainwater and solar power harvesting. The city faces a daily average
shortage of 150 MGD or almost 55,000 million gallons a year. At the standard 60
per cent runoff coefficient, Delhi’s average annual rainfall of 611 mm can meet
this deficit if we harvest rainwater across even less than half of the city’s 1500
sq km area. Accounting for the open space, this is very much possible.
In June 2001, the Ministry of Urban affairs and
Poverty Alleviation made rainwater harvesting mandatory in Delhi for all new
buildings with a roof area of more than 100 sq meter and plots larger than 1000
sq meter. The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) made rainwater harvesting
mandatory in all institutions and residential colonies in notified areas of south
and southwest Delhi, Faridabad, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad and set a deadline of March
31, 2002.
There is time before the monsoon arrives. The new
government must channel its energy in cracking down on every government,
institutional and commercial buildings violating these rules. As for individual
households and RWAs, the chief minister should know how a carrot-and-stick
policy works. A bureaucrat in Chennai and a scientist in Bangalore have already shown the way.
The Delhi administration has been debating about how
to offer subsidy to consumers who use solar heaters. The Delhi airport has set
up a mega 2.14 MW solar plant. The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC)
is consulting stakeholders before introducing meters for rooftop solar power plants
to keep records of self-consumption and contribution to the grid.
Yet, with at least 300 sunny days a year and more
than 700 sq km of built-up area in around 30 lakh households for installation
of photo-voltaic plates, Delhi has so far failed to tap its enormous solar
potential of more than 100 GW. More realistically, a 2013 Greenpeace study estimated that Delhi can become a 2GW city by
2020.
The stagnation of the solar boom across Europe
where governments have been struggling to bear the burden of over-subsidizing
the clean fuel is pushing the price of solar technologies down. On the other
hand, the depletion of fossil fuels and the growing awareness of the ecological
costs of dams are making traditional electricity costlier. In another five
years or so, solar electricity is likely to lose its price disadvantage.
While the US may eventually emerge the biggest
beneficiary of the lull in the European solar scenario, one town in California
has already decided to go the whole distance. About 70 miles north of Los Angeles, Lancaster passed
an ordinance and obtained the approval from the state energy commission to make
it mandatory for new builders to provide 1 KW of solar electricity per housing
unit.
Power and distribution companies resist such
moves everywhere. But that should only encourage Kejriwal. Mass harvesting of
sun and rain will require his government to budget for early incentives. But,
if he is serious about equal entitlement, this may just be the only way out
from the vicious and perpetual cycles of energy and water subsidies.
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