India's air quality 'filthy' despite decline in energy consumption

Per capita energy consumption in the country was up just 1.2% in 2019, slowest in 18 years

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump described India’s air quality as “filthy”, contrasting it with his country’s “superior” air quality. Ironically, the accusation comes at a time when energy consumption here has slowed and could decline the first time in two decades this year, on per capita basis, because of the fall in economic activity.

The burning of fossil fuel, including coal for power generation and use of petroleum products in transport, is a major source of air pollution in India.

Consumption of petroleum products was down nearly 19 per cent year-on-year (YoY) during April-September, according to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. In the same period, electricity generation was down 8 per cent, according to data from the National Load Despatch Centre.

This trend came on the back of an already weak trend in 2019, when per capita energy consumption was up just 1.2 per cent YoY, growing at the slowest pace in 18 years, according to the British Petroleum (BP) world energy database.

In comparison, energy consumption was up 3.9 per cent in China, 17.4 per cent in Bangladesh, 9.6 per cent in Vietnam, and 7.2 per cent in Indonesia last year. Pakistan saw the lowest uptake in South Asia with just 0.3 per cent increase in per capita energy consumption last year.

According to BP, an Indian consumed 24.9 gigajoule (GJ) of energy in 2019 on average, against 98.8 GJ in China, 42.7 GJ in Vietnam, and 32.9 GJ in Indonesia. However, per capita energy usage was 16.8 GJ in Sri Lanka, 16.4 GJ in Pakistan and 10.8 GJ in Bangladesh. 

India’s per capita consumption is a third of the world average (75.7 GJ), 9 per cent of US (287.6 GJ) and 15 per cent of Germany (161.7 GJ), and ranks 73 out of 77 countries on the BP global database.

Economists attribute this to the economic slowdown in India. “Energy consumption is highly correlated to industrial growth, per capita income and urbanisation. Industrial growth took a hit in 2019 and growth in per capita income slowed down in line with a general slowdown in the economy. This impacted the energy demand last year,” says Madan Sabnavis, head economist CARE Ratings. 

He expects a further slowdown in energy usage in industry and transport sector in 2020, which may be partly compensated by some uptick in usage by households due to work from home. This should lead to a decline in air pollution.  

In the past five years, energy consumption here has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3 per cent, down from 4 per cent in the previous five-year period (2009-14). In contrast, energy demand accelerated in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka while Vietnam maintained its pace energy demand during the period.

For example, per capita energy consumption grew at a CAGR of 8.1 per cent in Bangladesh during 2014-19, while it grew at an annualised rate of 8.4 per cent in Vietnam, 3.4 per cent in Indonesia, and 8.8 per cent in Sri Lanka.

India’s large population, however, makes its one of the biggest energy consumers on collective basis, behind China, the US, Europe and West Asia.

According to BP, India used 34.1 exajoules (EJ) of energy in 2019 up from 33.3 EJ a year ago. In comparison, China used 141.7 EJ, while US used 94.6 EJ, Europeans used 83.8 EJ. Russia was behind India with 29.8 EJ of energy consumption in 2019.