Conventional Energy: What It Is and What It Costs

In one line

Five sources that share three features: a fuel that must be found and moved, a plant that can be commanded, and a cost the price does not include.

What the class contains

Coal and lignite. The dominant source of Indian electricity. A stock resource, mined under the Mines and Minerals Act as a major mineral, moved by rail, and burnt in a boiler to raise steam.

Petroleum. Crude oil, refined into products. Governed at the resource end by the Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Act, 1948, under Entry 53 of the Union List. Used in India mostly for transport rather than for electricity.

Natural gas. The same resource statute; gas and gas-works are Entry 25 of the State List; burnt in a turbine, which is quicker to start and stop than a coal boiler.

Large hydro. A flow resource with storage, which makes it behave like a stock resource for despatch. Water is Entry 17 of the State List, subject to Entry 56 of the Union List, and section 8 of the Electricity Act requires the concurrence of the Central Electricity Authority for a hydro-electric generating station.

Nuclear. A stock resource of extreme energy density, reserved to the Union by Entry 6 and to the Government by the Atomic Energy Act, 1962.

Whether nuclear belongs in this class is a fair question and an answer should raise it. It is not renewable, so it is not non-conventional in the ordinary sense; but it is not conventional in Indian administrative practice either, being neither in the ministry that handles thermal and hydro nor in the ministry that handles new and renewable energy. Say which class you are putting it in and why.

The three features they share

A fuel that must be found, extracted and moved. That is a resource law problem before it is an energy problem, and the whole of Module II applies to it: the mineral vests in the Government, the concession is granted under the mining Act, the forest land needs the Centre's approval under the Van Adhiniyam, the land needs the 2013 Act, and the environmental clearance regime applies.

Despatchability. The plant can be told to produce more or less. It is the property the grid is built around, and the load despatch centres of sections 26 to 33 of the Electricity Act exist to exercise it.

And an externality the price does not include. Air pollution and carbon dioxide from coal, lignite, oil and gas; submergence, displacement and altered river flow from large hydro; long-lived waste and accident risk from nuclear.

Where each sits in Indian law

Coal: a major mineral; Entry 54 with the section 2 declaration; the nationalisation statutes and, after 2014, the auction and allocation regime; generation delicensed by section 7 of the Electricity Act.