The Tata Mundra power project has been provided the necessary loans and subsidy by the IFC to start the project. As I argued yesterday in Coal power or no power, the power plants need to be built.
Dot Earth considers the dilemma and provides more stark numbers.
India faces power shortages that leave more than 400 million people without access to electricity, mainly in poor rural areas. The country needs to expand generation capacity by 160,000 megawatts over the next decade, and this new project helps address this gap.
As Michael Wines reported last year, the 700 million people of sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa have access to the same amount of electricity used by the 38 million people of Poland.
Dot Earth concludes, “Is all of this bad? If you’re one of many climate scientists foreseeing calamity, yes. If you’re a village kid in rural India looking for a light to read by, no.”
