August Andrews<\/p>\n
2\/20\/15<\/p>\n
Energy Justice<\/p>\n
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Case Study: Energy Poverty in India<\/p>\n
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India is one of the largest nations in the world, with a population of 1.25 billion people.\u00a0 This makes India the second most populous country in the world, second only to China.\u00a0 Despite its massive population and massive workforce, a large portion of India still lives in energy poverty.\u00a0 An average of about thirty five percent of India\u2019s population is caught in energy poverty.\u00a0 Energy poverty is where people, just like having low or no access to money in economic poverty, have little to no access to electricity and the benefits that come with it.\u00a0 In India, with electricity come many injustices whether there is a lack of it or an abundance.\u00a0 These injustices take many forms but many revolve round the energy justice framework points of due process, availability, and intragenerational equity.<\/p>\n
Due process is an important aspect of the energy justice framework.\u00a0 Due process is based on human rights and that in the processes of producing energy or extracting it that these rights must be respected.\u00a0 Due process also involves the human rights justices or injustices in an absence of electricity as well through a number of things like access to clean drinking water, education, the right to live a healthy life and many more.\u00a0 In rural India energy poverty is much greater because of the difficulties in rural electrification similar to America in the early 1900s, including cost of putting in lines, maintenance from harsh conditions or vegetation. Another factor to consider in electrification is the economic variable of putting a lot of resources into extending the energy grid to an area that is sparsely populated or where many may not be able to afford electricity and installation on a seasonal agrarian income.\u00a0 In the absence of electricity the most popular form of light energy is kerosene lamps.\u00a0 Before the revolution of incandescent lighting kerosene was the most up to date and popular lighting source, with the oil industry rising with it.\u00a0 While it may be one of the best non-electric sources of light, kerosene has some drawbacks.\u00a0 The first of these is the level of light, much dimmer than electric lights, and the lamps require much maintenance for them to work well, with constant cleaning and trimming of the wick.\u00a0 A bigger problem and injustice lies however in the fumes it puts off.\u00a0 Like any burning substance kerosene produces smoke, acting as an indoor air pollutant.\u00a0 While this may not seem like a large issue just from lighting, it has to be taken into account also that most people in rural India use biomass as an energy source for cooking and heating.\u00a0 Breathing in this poorly combusted biomass smoke as well as kerosene smoke is harmful to the people living there, causing respiratory issues and even death.\u00a0 The annual death toll from this in India is estimated to be 500,000 deaths.\u00a0 That\u2019s 25 times the entire population of Carlisle dying in a year, just from fumes from cooking and lighting.\u00a0 This is a great injustice to due process because simply from a lack of electricity, many people\u2019s health and lives are detrimentally effected.\u00a0 Another injustice coming from this is the time and money that has to be spent to get these forms of energy.\u00a0 It is estimated that rural households spend ten percent of their income on biomass fuels or kerosene.\u00a0 This income could be used for other things such as electricity which would cover those needs and extend to other parts of household life as well, improving the standard of living there.\u00a0 Often these people have to go get these resources themselves, which can also endanger their health.\u00a0 In impoverished parts of the world, women out gathering biomass fuels are at greater risk the further they go from home to things such as assault and rape but also just hazards associated with it such as lifting heavy loads of wood.<\/p>\n
Availability of electricity is also an aspect of the energy justice framework where injustices are found in India\u2019s energy poverty.\u00a0 This part of the energy justice framework revolves around access to a reliable and stable source of electricity.\u00a0 Light can play a large role in household life, one way it is especially important is to children in school.\u00a0 In homes where they have access to electric light, children have access to sufficient light at night to study by.\u00a0 On average these students have been shown to study more than children in homes without electricity.\u00a0 This puts the children in non-electrified homes at an automatic disadvantage to peers that have access to electricity.\u00a0 The lack of availability is also an injustice because it affects economic opportunity for many people.\u00a0 Studies show that women in households with electricity on average work seventeen percent more hours than in households without.\u00a0 Because of access to electricity they no longer have to spend time, energy, or income gathering biomass fuel and can spend this time earning a living and adding to the household income.\u00a0 Electrification of random households also showed that electrification can reduce poverty by thirteen percent, supporting the ability of electrification to improve standard of living in these households.\u00a0 Electrified villages and towns also have better economic opportunity because with electricity they can keep their shops open for longer hours and at night, giving them more time to earn a living as opposed to shops that may not have electricity.\u00a0 This is an injustice because since these people don\u2019t have access they are at an economic opportunity disadvantage to electrified homes.\u00a0 While electrification boasts the ability to improve standard of living and economic opportunity, it is also limited by the lack of reliable and secure energy services in these areas.\u00a0 If energy providers and services are poorly operated these homes can\u2019t take advantage of the electricity or tap into its full potential.\u00a0 In fact, because of this almost all rural homes also have kerosene lamps for when the power goes out or services are down.\u00a0 This is an injustice because it is limiting the availability of needed energy because of the inefficiencies of an industry.\u00a0 This unreliability of energy services also makes the state more reluctant to electrify rural areas, prolonging the injustices occurring there.<\/p>\n
While the injustices of energy poverty in India provide great injustices, the processes involved in obtaining that energy also bring with them their own set of injustices.\u00a0 While these issues cross paths with many of the points of the energy justice framework, one that involves many of the issues with energy production is intragenerational equity.\u00a0 Intragenerational equity is being responsible for and taking today\u2019s actions, knowing that they will affect the lives of future generations.\u00a0 Because of intragenerational equity when you discuss the injustices of energy poverty, you also have to examine the injustices of producing more energy to electrify.\u00a0 India\u2019s primary form of energy is coal because it is relatively cheap and is largely domestically produced, but coal\u2019s production and use brings its own set of injustices. \u00a0Coal mining has historically been a very dangerous job, usually done underground, but the mines found now in India look like a different planet.\u00a0 The most common form of coal mining in India is now open pit mining.\u00a0 Some injustices that comes from this are that the overburden, which must be removed to get to the coal, is toxic. The mine itself also provides the injustice of displacing people with improper or no compensation, rooting up families future generations and their ways of life. \u00a0This is especially problematic for tribal peoples because they rely on the land around them to sustain them and can\u2019t just move to a big city and try to find work.\u00a0 These tribal peoples also live in some of the most mineral and resource rich areas, putting them at high risk. \u00a0The reason these things are intragenerational equity issues is because once the coal is gone there will be no jobs or energy being produced with the mine\u2019s coal, there will just be nothing left but something that looks like it should belong on mars and the harmful effects to the people and environment around it for generations to come.<\/p>\n
Energy poverty is a complex problem, involving many moving parts in both the government and the private sector.\u00a0 The injustices associated with energy poverty cover many parts of the energy justice framework, but some of the most prominent are ones involving due process, intragenerational equity, and availability.\u00a0 India is following the path blazed by other countries to electrify and will likely find many of the same problems they did, with electricity first coming to the wealthy and the cities and with government efforts allowing it to spread to the masses and rural areas.\u00a0 The injustices of energy poverty involving due process are many aspects of health related issues such as injury from collecting fuel and respiratory problems from the combustion of that fuel. \u00a0The injustices of availability are the results of a lack of electricity like decreased economic opportunities as well as children in electrified homes being at automatic advantage over other students who may not have electricity available to them.\u00a0 The most pressing issues of intragenerational equity did not come from energy poverty itself, but instead from the solution to the problem.\u00a0 By building more coal mines and plants they are degrading their environment, and leaving future generations with a much more scarred and polluted world than they found it.\u00a0 India needs energy, but the world doesn\u2019t need more coal.\u00a0 Instead of choosing the cheaper option of relying on coal for their energy needs, India should put those funds and labor into renewable energy and programs that work directly with communities to bring them electricity.<\/p>\n
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Works Cited<\/p>\n
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Sovacool, Benjamin K., and Michael H. Dworkin.\u00a0Global Energy Justice: Problems, Principles, \u00a0 and Practices<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. Print.<\/p>\n Khandker, Shahidur R., Hussain A. Samad, Rubaba Ali, and Douglas F. Barnes. “Who Benefits \u00a0 Most from Rural Electrification? Evidence in India.”\u00a0The Energy Journal<\/em>(2014).\u00a0World \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bank<\/em>. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. <www.worldbank.org>.<\/p>\n I did not know where to find the information to cite my other two in class sources, but my other two in class sources were: \u201cRich Lands Poor People CSE\u201d, and the \u201cIndia Energy Challenges\u201d reading<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" August Andrews 2\/20\/15 Energy Justice Case Study: Energy Poverty in India India is one of the largest nations in the world, with a population of 1.25 billion people.\u00a0 This makes India the second most populous country in the world, second only to China.\u00a0 Despite its massive population and massive workforce, a large portion … Continue reading Energy Poverty in India<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/energy-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}