Avik Chattopadhyay
Two things are crucial to making the adoption of electric mobility happen…lots of plastics and lots of electricity / power. The first is to house all those gazillions of cells and pack them all onto the floors and second is to keep charging the millions of electric vehicles through day and night, rain or sun, mountain or sea beach.
Any market that has sorted out these two things can sit back, relax and watch the slow and agonising death of the internal combustion engine. And stand up at the next COP summit holding a placard saying “I’ve come clean!”
Does India stand a healthy chance of doing the same, at least when Amritkaal draws to a close? Hope in hell, I believe. For, whatever be the population of electric vehicles, we would not have touched the problems of plastics and power. Do not ever think that I am not advocating the switch to clean mobility systems like electric. But I am certainly questioning our level of planning and preparedness to absorb its infrastructural consequences.
Electric vehicles are heavier than ICE counterparts. Various experts say the weight increase can vary from 25% to 35%. This is due to the battery packs that cover the entire floor in a car or various parts of the two-wheeler. If no light-weighting is done, the electric vehicle will be reduced to a magnificent piece of static sculpture. And the latest premium ICE cars anyway use a significant amount of aluminium, so serious weight trimming is needed in, say a Jaguar I-Pace to make it a better proposition than the F-Pace.
All that will happen through increased use of plastics. Various types of plastics – polyurethanes, polypropylene, polyethylene, and engineering plastics (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, acrylic-styrene-acrylonitrile, polybutylene terephthalate, polyoxymethylene, and polyamide). Add to this the existing plastic usage in activities like covering seats / upholstery, vehicle manual jackets and emergency kit pouches. A study by the University of Plymouth says that every electric car uses close to 40 kg of plastic!
In 2020 alone 400 million tonnes of plastics were produced globally. Estimates say by 2050 it will go up to 1,100 million tonnes! If there is growing awareness about the environmental impact of plastics, why such estimates? Because we are going electric! Yippee! And how is plastic made? From polymers derived from fossil-fuel based chemicals like petroleum and natural gas. Get the drift now? While we are going bonkers reducing plastics from our lives, we are ecstatic about switching to a vehicle that uses more plastics, albeit of the industrial type. And industrial plastics, while having a longer shelf life, are tougher to recycle or dispose of.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board, 34 lakh tonnes of plastic waste was created in India in 2019-20. It has doubled in the last 5 years at a whopping CAGR of 21.8%! Independent estimates say that it will reach 50 lakh tonnes by 2041. Interestingly there are too many numbers going around but we shall stick to the CPCB data as that is fearsome enough.
Why and how will the landfills like Ghazipur go up further? Currently the plastic consumption per capita in India is 20 kg while it is 109 kg in the US and 28 kg as a global average. So, we have a long way to go in increasing plastic consumption as an integral part of our improving lifestyles and consumption patterns. Just like we consume more animal protein now than a decade back, we shall consume more plastic too.
And generate both increased amounts of industrial plastic waste and e-waste. As per the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, we produced one million tonnes of e-waste in 2019-20. More electric vehicles will mean more e-waste, especially at the bottom of the value chain when disposing off batteries of unregulated 3-wheelers. One private organisation in the business of creating awareness describes the current situation in the graphic below…
Source: HindRise
While regulations like Extended Producer Responsibility [EPR] propose to bring plastic use under control through reuse, repurposing and recycling, the 30% itself in a country like India is enough to cover most European nations with a plastic sheet. Under the E-Waste Management Rules 2018 of the Govt of India, out of the 21 electronic items notified for fulfilling EPR obligations, not a single one pertains to electric mobility!
I sat through a panel discussion at TiECon where a speaker explained how each battery pack will be reused 3 times when it finally gets to the recycler. There is no way it would find itself in a landfill right after its life in a car. What naivete! This is the same country where the sale of acid over the counter is banned by law, yet acid attacks happen on open roads!
Regulations are definitely required but enforcement will take a good 10-12 years to happen across the country. Given that most of the electric 3-wheelers do not meet any safety regulation due to vested interests, the EPR of 70% is a pipedream. And that makes PLASTIC the first cause of a short-circuit in the adoption of electric mobility in India.
Now let’s talk about the second cause. It is about POWER.
I am not going into the source of power generated, as a lot has already been written about it. I am going to write about the amount of power that needs to be generated for a country about to become a USD5 trillion economy by 2025!
That implies we need to install capacities right now to cater to the increase in manufacturing, the increase in construction and infrastructure, the increase in household consumption and finally, the increase in electric mobility.
Let us start with the per capita consumption in India. It has grown by 20% over the last 8 financial years as per data from Central Electricity Authority, Ministry of Power. Yet, as per the IEA reports, India ranks around 100 out of 140 countries on this parameter. China stands 52nd with a per capita annual consumption of 4600 kWh.
Source: Central Electricity Authority
This implies that as we head towards a USD 5 trillion economy, one obvious outcome will be increased per capita consumption, both domestic as well as commercial. If all the projected investments in manufacturing under the PLI scheme were to happen, we should be looking at a doubling of consumption very soon, if not more.
In that case, are we prepared in terms of doubling our electricity generation in tandem? Let us have a look at the current trend.
Source: Central Electricity Authority
In 5years, from January 2019 to January 2023, the capacity has grown by 13%. As close to 580,000 villages have been electrified, the demand and consumption has grown at a rate higher than the capacity expansion.
Let us take a look at 2 more data points – peak demand versus supply and average demand versus supply. Again, using statistics from the CEA, the demand, as in January 2023 is slightly more than the supply.
Coal still accounts for roughly 50% of all electricity installed capacity. Renewables are at 30% as in January 2023, which is a huge development over the past 5 years. However, the generation from renewables has been a matter of concern. It has not been a steady upward graph. Solar has seen steady growth over the past 2 years while wind plays spoilsport.
Source: Central Electricity Authority
A 10-year study of electricity consumption shows that domestic consumption has been growing the healthiest, driven by village electrification as well as urban real estate. Industrial and commercial consumption has not been trailblazing but if the big national initiatives like Gati Shakti and Aawas Yojana are to happen, these sectors should be seeing double digit growth rates. Infrastructure, logistics, industrial manufacturing and commercial transportation will lead the charge towards that USD 5 trillion mark. Will the planned capacity expansion of electricity generation match up or as always, will we be found wanting? Will it be like the typical case of building a condominium first and then trying to lay the water,sewage and electricity lines? With no disrespect, we plan to fail whenever it comes to big disruptions.
Electric mobility is a massive disruption not just for the automaker and the vehicle buyer, but more for the policy maker and planner.
Source: Times of India Source: Statista
And the plans seem robust. Doubling the installed capacity to 817,254 MW by 2030 of which 275,000 MW will be renewable by 2027 itself. So, if everything seems to be in place, why do we still have power cuts? Why do industrial units run on generators for prolonged periods every day [generating around 80 billion kWh using 15 million tons of diesel annually]? Why do we still have the concept of “load shedding”? Why is the inverter industry growing in urban India covering almost 10 million households? Why do we import USD 2 billion worth of battery storage systems every year?
It is because of 4 factors which affect the electric mobility industry too.
1.The first is that installed capacity is not tantamount to actual production. Reports say that it is realistic to take actual capacity at 12%-15% lower than the installed claim, technically called the Maximum Continuous Rating [MCR] capacity.
2.The second is that we suffer from something called “transmission and distribution loss” which was as high as 20% of total electricity generated in 2020 as per Statista & CEA.
3.The third factor is electricity theft. Though the government does not put down any numbers, independent studies had put it at USD16 billion in 2015 itself. Some even went to the extent of saying that roughly 20% of the electricity generated is stolen, with some states suffering a 50% overall loss in electricity versus the supply due to transmission losses and theft!
4.The fourth is an erratic last-mile supply system with spikes and surges leading to damages to electronic equipment including chargers reducing their life.
Electric mobility in its current definition is perfect for a developed economy not burdened with inequalities and infrastructural deficiencies and with a robust enforcement and compliance mindset. For an economy like India, the transition to electric mobility, or any new green energy system, that needs fresh infrastructure, supply systems, regulations and compliances will have to be a careful one, weighing in all consequences and not of bravado and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’!
One does not want to get into a situation of plastic and e-waste stockpiles all over the country with your electric car becoming a piece of sculpture at your home due to inadequate electricity. So, we need to have our unique solutions such as a national energy storage system grid and many more.
Otherwise, the spark seen at the end of the tunnel may not be daylight but the beginning of a short circuit!
