The spectre of a looming power crisis is staring the world in the face. Today, national governments around the world, on the whole, produce less than half the electricity that the world consumes. At the turn of the last century, if you consider the world as a single unified market, the generation of power was barely one-tenth of the requirement of energy.

When we enter the world of 2020, human society will be back to producing only a marginal one-fifth of the power it needs.
As it is today, in several countries, the transmission and distribution of electricity losses guzzle 50 per cent of the power that is being produced. The transmission and distribution of a power generation facility necessitates an exorbitant capital investment.
Five years ago, to set up a 1 megawatt (MW) power plant meant a capital outlay of `1 crore. Today, the corresponding capital investment that an equivalent nuclear reactor will require is `4 crores.
The capital intensity of a power plant is a formidable deterrent to new investments in the organised power segment. Of course, the operational and maintenance costs in a hydel power manufacturing unit are significantly lower than that of thermal and nuclear establishments.
But a hydel power station, aggravates the saturation of the earth’s atmosphere with toxic greenhouse gases. A thermal power plant discharges copious quantities of carbon emissions like carbon monoxide, coal bed methane, sulphur dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Unsuccessfully trying to grapple with the rigours of climate change and the accumulation of harmful greenhouse gases? Specially at this cherry-picked juncture?
A number of inflection points have come interestingly together to move the international power crisis centre-stage on market momentum. Global temperatures increased by about four per cent, instead of declining by one to two degrees.
This steady two-degree annual decline in temperature has been the consistent pattern for the last few years. The Kyoto Protocol has come into its own, particularly in the Arctic, from 2000. But suddenly out of the blue, temperatures in the Arctic began to steadily climb down by about two degrees steadily every year. This was most probably the first-cut feedback about the rapidly soaring temperatures and miraculously melting and inundating water.
Nuclear power reactors are the flavour of the season. These capsules of infinite energy at the core of the atom are the ultimate fall-back, the ever dependable default option. Nuclear power generation is one of the most hazardous industries around the world and specially in India. An average nuclear reactor will spew over 200 kilograms of plutonium in a year. Against this backdrop, we require less than one or two kg of plutonium to convert plutonium powder into plutonium bombs.
Authoritative sources reveal that, given the volume and frequency of plutonium traffic in the US, it will be impossibly difficult for the American government to ensure that there is no leakage or spillage of plutonium from the elaborate network of official channels for sanctioned use. It is a well-settled point in the US that the American government will be responsible for 5,00,000 lung cancer deaths every year for 50 years between 2020 and 2070.
A thermal power plant also causes acid rain in a large surrounding area.
If you reason out the issue in logical detail, leveraging solar energy is perhaps the most pragmatic course for our human kith and kin on the face of the earth. It is the sun which is the main source of sustenance of our life and the earth. In our endeavour to further strengthen our energy infrastructure for the long haul, we have to cultivate the mindset of thrift: “A penny saved is a penny earned”.
It is an eye-opener to learn that, in the 1970s the US increased its power generation virtually by 90 per cent economising on energy consumption. The UK was also able to conserve power and pare down its energy bill by 25 per cent in the same period.