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Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
People And Nature ☭ by Pritam Singh and Simon Pirani.

The National Green Hydrogen Mission adopted by the Indian government in January is a major policy initiative, and it is a sign of the poverty of Indian politics that it remains so election-obsessed that has not been subjected to the public debate it deserves.

The absence of any critical evaluation by India’s opposition parties of this initiative, which has major implications for India’s development path, is staggering.

Student climate protesters in Delhi, 2019.
Photo by Vikas Choudhary

The Indian government is poised to offer energy companies subsidies to set up hydrogen “hubs” – but how this fits with climate policy and social justice goals remains unexplained.

As part of the Hydrogen Mission, companies such as Reliance and Indian Oil will be invited to bid for cash from a 20,000 crore rupee ($2.4 billion) fund.

There will also be money for manufacturing electrolysers, needed to make “green” hydrogen, and subsidies for fertiliser and steel makers to buy it.

But the Hydrogen Mission has been surrounded by hype that raises unjustified expectations.

Prabhat Kumar, an external affairs ministry official, claimed recently that hydrogen could be “our main source of energy in future”. But that will never happen.

Even if the government meets its ambitious target of producing 10 million tonnes of “green” hydrogen each year, that would still only provide about one-fifteenth of the energy that India gets from coal.

The very idea that India will become a major exporter of hydrogen, which runs through all the government’s documents, is questionable.

India may need 6 million tonnes/year of “green” hydrogen to displace the “grey” hydrogen it uses now, for fertiliser manufacture and in oil refineries.

Ending the use of “grey” hydrogen is a priority: it is a global warming nightmare, as for each tonne manufactured, between 10 and 18 tonnes of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere.

Before exporting hydrogen, India should also weigh up whether it can be used to displace some of the 160 million tonnes of coal, and more than 30 billion cubic metres of gas, that it imports annually.

The government’s emphasis on “green” hydrogen, rather than “grey”, is welcome. “Green” hydrogen is made by electrolysis – feeding an electric current, produced from renewables such as wind or solar power, into water. There are no direct greenhouse gas emissions but the process requires huge amounts of electricity and water.

We believe that public discussion is urgently needed – about the comparative costs of hydrogen and the burden on resources, and about whether investing in hydrogen will help or hinder climate policies and tackling social inequality.

On costs, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy asserts confidently that “green” hydrogen will be cost-competitive with “grey” hydrogen by as early as 2026.

This is risky. “Green” hydrogen now costs $3-$8/kilo, compared to $0.80-$1.70/kilo for “grey” hydrogen. The International Energy Agency projects that the cost of “green” hydrogen could fall to $1.40-$3.20/kilo, but only by 2050.

The International Renewable Energy Agency is more optimistic, and reckons green hydrogen costs “could” (not “will”) fall below $2/kilo by 2030 – while CRU, the commodity markets analysts, say they do not expect “green” hydrogen to be available for less than $3/kilo, even in 2050.

Markets have failed many times to bring about the economic shifts needed to tackle climate change, and the danger is that they will fail once again.

As for resources, the renewable energy ministry claims that India can supply “abundant” electricity from renewables. But energy researchers urge caution.

Scholars at the Florence School of Regulation estimate that to implement the National Hydrogen Mission, India would need 50 billion litres/year of demineralised water supply – and several parts of India are “already severely water-stressed”.

Analysts at the Energy and Resources Institute caution that shortage of unused land will frustrate solar and wind capacity construction.

Manufacture of electrolysers is also a bottleneck. Now, all the world’s manufacturers are turning out 8 GW of electrolysers each year. To reach the government’s targets, India could need 12 years’ worth of current world supply, and its own electrolyser production capacity right now is negligible.

Many of these obstacles may be overcome, even if not at the speed that officials suggest.

But there is a more fundamental question: to contribute to averting dangerous climate change, should India prioritise hydrogen, or use its renewable electricity to displace coal consumption?

The Hydrogen Mission aims to produce 5 million tonnes/year of “green” hydrogen by 2030 – which would need about 120-125 GW of renewable electricity generation capacity. That means doubling the amount of electricity India gets from solar panels and wind farms.

But that electricity could be fed into the electricity grid, which would allow India to retire 30 or 40 large (1.5 GW) coal-fired power stations. Coal burning and coal imports could be cut, helping to deal with the global warming threat and air pollution.

An authoritative report by the Energy and Resources Institute points out:

Hydrogen production from renewables is an energy-intensive process, and direct electrification should always be preferred wherever possible.

That is because, if you use 10 units of energy (as electricity) to make hydrogen, the hydrogen you produce only contains 7 units of energy. If you compress it and transport it, you use up another 3 units. So it is always more energy-efficient to use the electricity directly, than to turn it into hydrogen.

Despite such expert opinion, the government is offering hydrogen producers preferential terms, including a waiver of inter-state transmission charges, on which to buy electricity.

This amounts to a privileged carve-out for the industries that use hydrogen – while the electricity’s sectors problems, including debts, carbon-wasteful inefficiency, and patchy access, remain.

The fight to forestall dangerous climate change must go hand-in-hand with policies that address social inequality. But there is little evidence of this in the government’s approach.

On the contrary, the National Hydrogen Mission dovetails with the business plans of India’s most powerful companies, carrying the danger that the poorest sections of society will be left still further behind energy-wise.

India’s hydrogen enthusiasts include Reliance Industries, who are considering investing in hydrogen production in Australia, and Indian Oil, who say that only half the hydrogen it makes over the next decade will be “green”.

Adani last year announced a $50 billion hydrogen development project in partnership with TotalEnergies, the French oil and gas company. But in the wake of Adani’s recent crisis, TotalEnergies pulled out, and now Adani has too.

For hydrogen to be used to meet climate and development goals, these issues need addressing. Otherwise, it could turn into expensive greenwash for energy companies, that in turn postpones the action needed to move away from fossil fuels.

⏺ This article first appeared in The Tribune (India) on 10 April. Pritam Singh is Professor Emeritus in Economics at Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford, UK. Simon Pirani is author of Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto Press, 2018), and writes this blog

⏺ Rhetoric aside, India must find answers to these seven critical questions on green hydrogen – The Wire.

⏩ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitter, whatsapp and telegram. Please follow!

India ☀ ‘Hydrogen Mission’ Must Not Become Expensive Greenwash

Pritam Singh and Simon Pirani ☭ Given the climate emergency our planet earth is facing, with accelerating global heating and devastating biodiversity loss, any initiative by a government which proclaims its aim as “greening the economy” deserves critical examination for both its importance and limitations.

27-March-2023

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s announcement, on India’s 75th Independence Day, of the government’s plan to launch a National Hydrogen Mission is one such initiative by an emerging economic power in the global economy.

Adivasi people starting a 300 km march to the state capital, in October 2021, to protest at
proposed coal mines in the Hasdeo forests, Chhattisgarh, India. Photo from Adani Watch web site

Its stated purpose was to make India a production and export hub for green hydrogen. This is also believed to be linked to India’s aim to reduce its reliance on oil from Russia and the Middle East which has come into the limelight during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

That hydrogen is a problematic green energy resource as an alternative to fossil fuels is not generally recognised. This obfuscation characterises Indian government’s “green” hydrogen mission too.

Different types of hydrogen

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but for commercial use on earth it is produced either (i) from fossil gas, usually by steam reformation, or (ii) by the electrolysis of water. Electrolysis technology splits the hydrogen from oxygen in water.

More than 98% of hydrogen used commercially is “grey” – produced from gas. Left-over carbon is joined with oxygen and released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Global hydrogen production’s carbon footprint is about four-fifths the size of the aviation sector’s.

Gas companies claim they can produce “blue” hydrogen, without most of these emissions, by capturing and storing the carbon. But carbon capture and storage technology, experimented with for about 40 years, has never worked at large scale.

“Green” hydrogen, produced by electrolysing water, is emissions-free but very energy-intensive. Wind and solar capacity one-and-a-half times the world’s current total would be needed to substitute the world economy’s “grey” hydrogen with “green”.

India’s plan

The Indian government says it intends to focus on “green” hydrogen – a good approach in principle. However India decarbonises its economy, hydrogen may be needed – particularly to make fertilisers for agriculture, and for zero-carbon steel production.

But we must face the fact that large amounts of solar and wind power would be needed, while India also needs those energy sources to reduce its dependence on coal. The burden on land and water resources also needs to be considered.

The viability of India’ Green Hydrogen Mission has also come into question because Adani business participation was a key driver. Adani announced a $50 billion hydrogen development project in partnership with TotalEnergies, the French oil and gas company.

TotalEnergies had hoped to take a 25% stake in an Adani subsidiary to focus on hydrogen. But in the wake of the crisis in Adani business recently, TotalEnergies has stopped the project going forward.

Questions that need answering

We believe that questions need answering about the National Hydrogen Mission – about how it fits into India’s energy and climate policy more broadly; about the resources it will use; and about what hydrogen will be used for in India.

Question 1. Will the vital task of cutting coal consumption be undermined, by focusing renewable electricity capacities on hydrogen?

The government proposes to produce 5 million tonnes/year of “green” hydrogen by 2030 – which would need about 120-125 gigawatts (GW) of renewable electricity generation capacity. That would mean more than doubling the amount of electricity generated in India from solar panels and wind farms – a herculean task.

It is critical to use these valuable resources wisely: each megawatt-hour used to make hydrogen will not be available for other purposes.

The amount of solar panels and wind farms needed could, alternatively, supply as much electricity to the grid as 30-40 large (1.5 GW) coal-fired power stations. Such stations could then be retired. India could start cutting coal output, coal imports and coal burning even before 2030. These would be valuable contributions to tackling dangerous global warming and air pollution.

There is no doubt that rapid expansion of renewable electricity generation is necessary. But a public policy discussion is needed about the priorities for its use. It should not be committed in advance to hydrogen.

Question 2. Will hydrogen producers grab wind and solar electricity supplies that are more urgently needed for the electricity grid?

An authoritative report by the Energy and Resources Institute and Energy Transitions Commission explained: “Hydrogen production from renewables is an energy-intensive process, and direct electrification should always be preferred wherever possible.”

That is because, if you use 10 units of energy (as electricity) to make hydrogen, the hydrogen you produce only contains 7 units of energy. If you compress it and transport it, you use up roughly another 3 units. So it is always more energy-efficient to use the electricity, than to turn it into hydrogen.
   
A coal mine in Jharkand, India. Photo by TripodStories-AB / creative commons

Nevertheless, the government – while still working out details of the National Hydrogen Mission – has already offered hydrogen producers preferential terms, including a waiver of inter-state transmission charges, on which to buy electricity.

In other words, hydrogen production is being subsidised.

Companies producing solar power welcome the prospect of supplying direct to industrial customers with assured payment, rather than dealing with “uncertain payment from the cash-strapped distribution utilities”, the energy market researcher Sanjeev Ahluwia has pointed out.

But the answer to that is not to create a privileged carve-out for hydrogen producers. Rather, further work needs to be done on the electricity sector’s problems, including debts, carbon-wasteful inefficiency, and patchy access.

Question 3. Why are ministries and companies seeking to create new sources of hydrogen demand, when current demand will outstrip supply for the foreseeable future?

A report on hydrogen by NITI Aayog, the government’s own think tank, claims that “in the near term, it’s crucial to focus on domestic demand creation efforts, cost reduction pathways and early pilots”.

But what about India’s existing hydrogen consumption? It is nearly 6 million tonnes/year, more than half of which is used for fertiliser manufacture, and almost all the rest in oil refineries.

This is all “grey” hydrogen, made from gas or coal, using a chemical process called steam reformation. It is a global warming nightmare: for each tonne of hydrogen produced, between 10 and 18 tonnes of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Globally, “grey” hydrogen production emits nearly as much greenhouse gas as the aviation industry – more than Indonesia and the UK combined.

NITI Aayog’s report suggests increasing demand for green hydrogen e.g. by creating industrial hubs where it could be used – and even by exporting hydrogen. But when it comes to using “green” hydrogen to wind down “grey” hydrogen production, the report points to very optimistic price forecasts, that may never be realised.

The government says that, in addition to domestic uses, its Hydrogen Mission will lead to the “creation of export opportunities for green hydrogen and its derivatives”. Again, the benefits of exporting hydrogen need to be weighed against the costs in energy, greenhouse gas emissions and other resources.

Question 4. Has “green” hydrogen production’s heavy burden on resources – land and water, in particular – been considered?

To produce a kilogram of “green” hydrogen by electrolysis, you need nine litres of water, as well as electricity. Researchers at the Florence School of Regulation estimate that to implement the National Hydrogen Mission, India would need 50 billion litres of demineralised water supply. “As several parts of India are already severely water-stressed, solutions need to be found to cater to this additional water demand”, they point out.

Land is another constraint on large-scale hydrogen production. Analysts at the Energy and Resources Institute caution that shortage of unused land will frustrate solar and wind capacity construction: 

the binding constraint may not be the absolute availability of zero-carbon electricity, but rather the rate at which it can be built, given the challenges of land acquisition and environment where land is a scarce resource.

From that it follows – once again – that zero-carbon electricity must be deployed “in the most efficient way possible”. And – once again – “direct electrification of end-uses should be favoured wherever possible, in order to reduce the substantial conversion losses from the production of hydrogen for end-use consumption”.

Before talking about relatively inefficient uses of hydrogen for e.g. fuel cells for cars or for aviation, or to heat homes, these constraints need to be addressed.

Question 5. What about technological resources – electrolysers, specifically. Can the challenge be met as easily as is claimed?

Manufacture of electrolysers is a key bottleneck for producing “green” hydrogen. All the world’s manufacturers together can now turn out 8 GW of electrolysers each year. Four-fifths of this capacity is in China and Europe, and India surely needs to develop its own.

But to meet its target of producing 5 million tonnes/year of hydrogen, researchers at the Florence School of Regulation say that India could need 12 years’ worth of current world supply. “India has launched projects to manufacture electrolysers, but the actual numbers as of today are negligible.” Access to the minerals required could be another constraint.

Residents of a village threatened by Adani’s Gondulpara mine protest in
defence of their lands and livelihoods. Photo from Adani Watch web site

The aim of developing a robust domestic electrolyser manufacturing industry is surely a good one. “Green” hydrogen will be needed for fertiliser manufacture – even making the most optimistic assumptions about India turning away from industrial farming methods. It can be used for making zero-carbon steel.

But it is important to take an honest look at the constraints on the shift away from “grey” hydrogen and fossil fuel dependence, and not to sugar-coat difficulties.

Question 6. Will the National Hydrogen Mission reduce India’s dependence on imported natural gas, as the government claims?

The government claims that, by 2030, its Hydrogen Mission will save 1 lakh crore rupees ($15 billion) of fossil fuel imports. It does not give any details about how that saving will be achieved.

If “green” hydrogen is used to substitute for current “grey” hydrogen output, that would reduce coal and gas demand – but the government also plans to raise gas use, and therefore gas imports, substantially (from 6% of the energy mix in 2019, to 15% in 2030).

Furthermore, India is currently importing more than 160 million tonnes of coal annually.

Energy efficiency measures, and continued electricity sector reform, could sharply reduce gas and coal use while improving the quality of access. This is the best way to reduce import dependence. Will institutional attention focused on hydrogen detract from these tasks?

Question 7. Will the companies that have announced investments in “green” hydrogen address social justice and climate policy aims?

The government’s plans are predicated on the assumption that the cost of producing “green” hydrogen can be cut from $3-8 per kilo now, to $1-2 in 2030. There is no certain way of doing this – and, if one is not found, the companies who have invested in the process will be reluctant to go further. After all, their business is to make money.

In addition to Adani, Indian Oil has announced its intention of becoming a major player. But there are big question marks as to whether its use of hydrogen will be “green”: over the next decade, the company says that only half its hydrogen will be from electrolysis; the remainer will presumably be “grey” or “blue”. This, combined with the fact that the hydrogen will be used for refining oil, means that the life-cycle emissions reductions are likely to be negligible.

Government funding is being used to kick-start other projects, such as a proposed $575 million “hydrogen hub” at Kochi, in Kerala.

For hydrogen to be used in a way that meets climate and development goals, these questions need answering. Otherwise, it could turn into expensive greenwash for energy companies, that in turn postpones the action that is really needed to move away from fossil fuels.

➤ This article (Question 3, second to last paragraph) was corrected on 28 March, to more accurately reflect the contents of the NITI Aayog report.

➤ About the photos. Adivasi (indigenous) people in central India have been organising for several years against the expansion of coal mining operations there by the scandal-hit Adani corporation. The photos show some of their protests. Question 1 above asked whether India’s National Hydrogen Mission could undermine the task of cutting coal production and use.

➤ This article first appeared in The Wire (India). Reproduced with thanks. 27 March 2023

➤ Pritam Singh is Professor Emeritus in Economics at Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford, UK. Simon Pirani is author of Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto Press, 2018), and writes this blog

More on hydrogen

➤ Communities question hydrogen hype – People & Nature. This article has links to more sources about hydrogen

➤ Germany’s Great Hydrogen Race, by Corporate Europe Observatory

⏩ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitter, whatsapp and telegram. Please follow!

India ☀ ‘Green Hydrogen’ Project Could Undermine Climate And Social Justice Goals

Atheist Republic ✒ On June 5, 2022, BJP national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and BJP Delhi media head Naveen Kumar were suspended from the party’s membership due to offensive comments to many Muslims in India.

In the footage below, Sharma mocks Buraq (the flying donkey), the Quran, for describing the world as flat, and points out the age of the Prophet’s wife, Aisha, in a TV debate last week.

Kumar has been removed from the party for a tweet that also insulted the prophet. That controversial tweet has been deleted.

“ I’ve been receiving death and rape threats, including beheading threats against me and family members,” Sharma said. She also stated on Twitter that her words came in response to insults against the Hindu god Shiva.

"If my words have caused discomfort or hurt religious feelings of anyone whatsoever, I hereby unconditionally withdraw my statement," she said, but her apology may have come too late.

The actions of these former BJP members stirred an international backlash from the Muslim world.

“The State of Qatar calls on the Indian government to immediately condemn these remarks and publicly apologize to all Muslims around the world,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Mohammed Al Ansari said.

Continue reading @ Atheist Republic.

Blasphemous Remarks By Hindu Politician Cause Diplomatic Troubles For India

Humanists International ✒ At the UN this week, Humanists International has highlighted the plight of anti-slavery and anti-caste activists in India, who are under attack from India’s right-wing, nationalist government.

In a statement delivered during a debate on the follow-up to and implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action at the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Humanists International’s Advocacy Officer, Lillie Ashworth, highlighted how caste and religious divisions in India have intensified as a result of the government’s promotion of Hindu nationalist policies.

Ashworth set out how speaking out against caste-based discrimination and prejudice can now be considered a form of “terrorism”, and how a rapidly diminishing space for freedom of expression and dissent is impeding the work of anti-slavery, Dalit and tribal rights activists.

She pointed to several legal developments of concern, including amendments to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Ostensibly a “terrorism prevention” law, the UAPA has been “routinely abused” to intimidate civil society activists and critics of the government, particularly those “working at the intersection of land rights, gender and caste”, she said. Under the UAPA, authorities are permitted to detain individuals for long periods without the granting of bail, in breach of their fundamental rights.

Continue reading @ Humanists International.

Challenging Caste Prejudice Now Considered ‘Terrorism’ In India, Humanists Tell UN

People And Nature ✈ Global warming is upsetting the monsoon, making droughts more likely, and changing the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians, writes Nagraj Adve, in a guest post based on his pamphlet, Global Warming in the Indian Context. 

 
The average sea level rise worldwide over 2016-2020 was nearly half a centimetre per year, says the United in Science 2020 report, published last month by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific institutions.

Photo: Fridays for Future Guwahati

The rate of sea level rise is now significantly higher than the 20th century average, largely due to the loss of ice from the great ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland, besides warmer ocean waters expanding.

Reading the United in Science 2020 report made me think about sea level rise in terms of centimetres rather than millimetres – for the first time in the 15 years that I have been engaging with the climate crisis.

The impact of rising waters in the Indian sub-continent is one of the many issues covered in a new edition of my pamphlet, Global Warming in the Indian Context, published today by People & Nature. I have updated the pamphlet – which was first published on People & Nature in June 2016 – to highlight many things about the climate crisis that have changed since then.

But the first thing to emphasise is that the social context in which climate change hits people in India is very different from that in the UK or mainland Europe.

■ In India, 650 million people rely on agriculture or related occupations; the average landholding per household is merely 2.5 acres, and half the area is under key crops such as rice and wheat;

■ Millions of small and marginal farmers have no access to irrigation, are entirely dependent on the rain, and hence more vulnerable to climatic changes; and

■ In the world’s most disastrous Covid-induced lockdown, 120 million people have lost their jobs or livelihoods – and there is no sign of economic recovery in sight.

Extreme climatic events have been getting more intense and frequent in India (and worldwide) in recent years – particularly extreme rainfall events. These result in floods, loss of property, and deaths – such as in the southern state of Kerala in August 2018, in which 350 people died. Simultaneously, there has also been a decline in the summer monsoon, from which India gets 75 per cent of its annual rainfall.

Climate change has this capacity to throw seemingly paradoxical impacts at you.

Besides air pollutants, one key reason for this lesser rain is that the Indian Ocean has been warming at a faster rate than the Indian landmass, and hence reducing the temperature differential between ocean and land that drives the Indian monsoon.

A fact not often discussed in popular writing or media reporting is that a warmer Indian Ocean is a common factor in several climatic changes in India: the wider spread of droughts, increased extreme rainfall, longer heat waves, and an increase in the frequency and duration of rainstorms, among others.

It has also contributed to droughts that have affected millions of poor people in Somalia, Zimbabwe, and other parts of Africa over the past four years.

Another trend that has intensified in recent years has been the falling prices of renewables. Solar power capacity in India has been expanded significantly (from about 5000 megawatts (MW) in 2016 to about 36,000 MW currently).

India’s is one of the few right-wing governments to support solar power, in sharp contrast to those in Brazil, Australia, and the US. However, unionisation is almost non-existent among the workforces of wind and solar companies in India, though a few unions and some policy think-tanks have begun to recently engage with how the energy transition in India would affect employment levels, the nature of work, and working conditions.

Photo: Fridays for Future India

Though the energy transition has barely begun particularly beyond the electricity subsector, both in India and worldwide, it is essential that workers and unions be integral to the process and part of the conversation, as a recent post on this website correctly emphasised.

An important shift that has taken place in recent years has been in the climate movement from below.

The eruption of protests organized by Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Fridays for Future (FFF) in the UK and mainland Europe ― along with in-your-face extreme events such as the raging fires in Australia and the western United States ― has pushed the climate crisis into wider consciousness almost everywhere.

In the United States, aided by the Sunrise movement, this is reflected in climate change becoming part of the mainstream electoral discourse, around the Green New Deal. In India, over the last 18 months, it has spawned a number of organizations that have adopted these two names, XR and FFF, in towns large and small.

India had no climate movement, in my view, but a bunch of NGOs doing their thing, for the last 25 years.

Now, encouragingly, we have the beginnings of one. A few of these organisations appreciate something important: the need to go beyond campaigning on WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social media platforms, and to build relationships with movements organized around people’s control over common resources and against mining and other extractive industries.

So, some things have changed, but what has remained the same are the roots of the problem: the centrality of inequality and capitalism to the climate crisis.

Inequalities continue to intensify, in India and worldwide. In India, 1 per cent of the population reportedly owns 58 per cent of the country’s wealth. Covid-19 hasn’t changed things: the recent rise in stock market valuations in the United States, and anecdotal evidence of consumption patterns in China suggest that the rich are yet again managing to pass on the burdens of an economic crisis on working people everywhere.

Therefore, as well as engaging with, and reducing emissions from intermediate systems such as electricity, transport, buildings, and agriculture, we simply can not address global warming satisfactorily unless these structural core issues that connect with justice and equity are given primacy and tackled head on.

Video: Nagraj Adve introducing his pamphlet Global Warming in the Indian Context



The pamphlet Global Warming in the Indian Context is FREE to download here. It covers five areas, broadly: the science of global warming; the roots of the crisis; climate impacts in India and globally, which inordinately hits those least responsible – the poor and other species; climate politics, including the Paris Agreement; and finally, some suggestions about what we can do, individually and collectively. It has been updated to include what the Covid-19 lockdowns would imply for current emissions, and other effects; key findings from a recent landmark report on climatic changes in India; information from the United in Science report mentioned above; and China’s new emissions pledges announced by President Xi Jinping on 22 September.

■ Download Global Warming in the Indian Context (pdf) – or read it on line here.

■ Nagraj Adve is a member of Teachers Against the Climate Crisis (TACC) and South Asian People’s Action Against Climate Crisis (SAPACC). He writes and gives talks in colleges on the science, impacts, and politics of global warming. Follow him, and TACC, on twitter.

India Climate Crisis ➖ This Is About Capitalism And Inequality

From Mint ➤ a company with a presence in Ireland has been on the offensive against the workforce in India. 


 Bengaluru: Nasdaq-listed IT services firm Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. has laid off thousands of employees on bench, who were not actively involved in any client projects.

In IT services companies, employees on bench are considered “non-billable" resources as their cost is not billed to any client. However, typically companies maintain a small percentage of bench employees so that they are prepared to execute projects immediately.

State IT employee unions in Karnataka and Chennai have alleged that Cognizant is executing mass layoffs after benching nearly 18,000 employees across India. The numbers could not be independently verified by Mint.

Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) has “strongly condemned" the decision taken by the management of Cognizant.

Continue reading @ Mint.

Cognizant Laid Off Thousands Of Employees On Bench IT Staff Unions

From Atheist Republic news of a law in defence of religious idiocy being used to prosecute a Social media CEO. 

CEO Of Twitter Charged With Blasphemy

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