The Congress has questioned the rationale of the Union government’s proposal to shift to electric vehicles (EV) by eliminating petrol and diesel vehicles by 2034. The @INCKerala handle on X, the official account of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee with 1.2 lakh followers, described the Centre’s EV policy as ‘thoughtless’ and warned against a disaster-in-the-making for the country.
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, during a speech in Mandi on May 29, had said that the government set a target of 10 years to eliminate petrol and diesel vehicles.
Through a series of tweets, the Congress warned that the country’s power generation capacity ought to be doubled if India is to eliminate diesel and petrol vehicles by adopting all EVs by 2034. It said a lot of coal will have to be used for more power generation, and it would eventually emit three times more carbon dioxide than petrol and diesel cars.
The Congress’s tweet has triggered a debate whether the country’s EV policy is about reducing carbon emissions or about reducing dependency on crude oil imports. The Congress deflated the arguments that the country was not importing coal. “While we produce a lot of coal, we also import a big chunk of our coal requirements from countries like Indonesia, South Africa, Australia, Russia, the U.S., etc. Last year alone we imported 268 tonnes of coal,” it said.
Example cited
Backed by data, the Congress pointed out that a car with a range of 276 km on a fully charged 40.5 kWh battery on EV variant, needs 11.66 litres of petrol or 10.62 litres of diesel to cover the same distance. It requires 50 units (kWh) of electricity to fully charge a 40 kWh battery, the tweet said.
It also warned that nearly two-thirds of the power required for a full EV regime would have to come from coal. “India currently has a total installed capacity of 444 gigawatt. Out of which 49% is coal, and a promising 19% is solar and 10% is wind. We’ve nearly maxed out hydro electricity production. Solar and Wind are unpredictable in nature. Solar generates power only during the daytime and EVs are mostly charged overnight. So, ultimately, we need to add coal based power plants to predictably add capacity to charge these millions of EVs.”
Need to double grid capacity
The Congress also warned that not only power generation but the power grid too should be doubled to address the EV needs by 2034. It said Mr. Gadkari was in an illusion.
“We have to double our grid capacity to have an all-EV future. This requires several lakhs of crores of rupees to be spent, and at the end of it all, we will end up tripling the carbon emissions.”
