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How India is providing a lifeline to struggling farmers amid its solar push
Good morning!
Here’s some good news to get things started:
Renewables, mainly wind, have met close to 100% of Portugal’s electricity needs over the past week, according to the grid operator.
Over the past month, 87% of South Australia’s electricity has come from wind and solar. Spot power prices have fallen to A$30.25/MWh on average — vs. A$40.45 across Australia’s main grid.
A third of subscribers to Germany's flat-rate €49 public transport ticket say they’re using their cars less, per a YouGov survey.
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The Indian government has provided a critical lifeline to farmers in marginal food-growing areas by leasing portions of their land to accelerate the country’s ambitious solar energy programme.
If it wasn’t for the rental income derived from participating in a gigantic 2GW solar park project in the Pavagada region, “I couldn’t have sent my girls to university,” a local farmer, Srinivas, told Bloomberg reporter Akshat Rathi.
In his new book, Climate Capitalism, Rathi writes about the impact that the scheme has had on farmers in the semi-arid Pavagada area since it was launched in 2016.
“Without it, [Srinivas] said, pointing to the construction site where rows of neatly laid solar panels stretched to the horizon, hundreds of farmers in debt with large agricultural loans would have been staring into the abyss.”
The region’s farmers are struggling to cope with droughts, which have become more frequent and more intense over the past two decades as climate change advances.
The lack of rainfall has pushed an increasing number of farmers to default on their debts as they battle to make ends meet.
They often turn to government-underwritten crop failure insurance. But with more claims being filed across the country, “opportunities like the solar park in Pavagada are a way for the government to decrease its liabilities without abandoning its responsibilities to support the country’s farmers,” Rathi writes.
“For hundreds of farmers, like Srinivas, the annual lease payments may not fully compensate for the lost farming income, but do provide a decent, steady source of income that eases a challenging life,” Rathi adds.
“What’s happening in India can be a model for countries in Africa, Central and South America and South East Asia, which combine to make up more than half of humanity.”
Since the state started leasing land from farmers for solar projects in 2016, India’s installed solar power capacity has increased sevenfold to 67GW, according to data collated by the International Renewable Energy Agency and Mercom India Research.
- Read the full story here.
Based only on energy policies that have already been announced, renewables will account for nearly half (47%) of the world’s electricity generation in 2030 — up from 30% in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) notoriously conservative forecasts.
Including nuclear, low-emissions technologies will supply 57% of the world’s power at the end of the decade.
- Continue reading here.
Thanks to a range of relatively simple but effective interventions, the UK has become a global leader in tackling food waste — a major contributor to climate change.
Between 2007 and 2012, household food waste in the country declined 21%, and the UK has since become the first nation to get halfway to its 2030 target of a 50% reduction in waste, according to Hope.
One “easy and effective change” was to adopt ‘best before’ rather than ‘sell by’ dates on products, says Hope, who’s based in the UK capital of London.
- Continue reading here.
South Australia is on track to get to 100% net renewable electricity by 2027, according to the state’s grid operator.
A leader in the energy transition, South Australia has already ditched coal-fired power and now is rapidly phasing out gas as well. Wind farms, and a cumulative 2GW of rooftop solar panels on homes and businesses, are now the main sources of supply.
In the year to end-September 2023, solar and wind met all of the state’s electricity needs a quarter of the time, grid operator ElectraNet says in its latest transmission planning report.
“We expect to reach 100% net renewable electricity generation by 2026–27, two years earlier than forecast last year,” the report says. “Energy from renewable sources supplied about 71% of South Australian electricity generation in 2022–23 and is forecast to exceed and remain close to 100% of South Australian demand from 2026–27.”
- Continue reading here.
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