Fueling the finances- Lighting up with Solar energy

India has embarked on the phase II of JNNSM and the latest bidding (Feb 22, 2014) saw a good response. To improve bankability of projects, government has revised certain norms. These include Viability Gap funding (VGF) support from the national clean energy fund (NCEF), Credit Guarantee, and reduced FiT (to foster innovation). While these are few policy measures, real thrust to improve the availability of finance is missing.

The rising demand for energy, limited sources of conventional energy which is becoming costlier day by day and the concerns for climate change have propelled India towards tapping the omnipotent source of power – the solar energy. But it comes with an initial price tag and financing solar has become the biggest challenge today.

The Status Quo

Under National Solar Mission(JNNSM) and various state level policies various measures like capital subsidy, tax incentives, Feed in Tariff (FiT), PPAs, REC mechanism etc. are being undertaken to promote solar in India. On the back of these, more than 2 GW of solar capacity has been installed within a span of 4 years. However various problems have been observed vis-à-vis finance.

Although labor & construction costs are low and there is high resource availability, the high cost of financing increases the cost of Renewable energy (RE) in India. This has been highlighted in the CPI-ISB report on “Meeting India’s Renewable Energy Targets: The Financing Challenge”.

The cost of debt is high due to general high rate of interest and a short tenor but variable interest rate debt. Commercial banks, which dominate the debt market, are facing an asset liability mismatch and reaching the lending limits. Moreover, lenders avoid financing on project basis (non recourse) because of unreliability of irradiation data, technology risks and off taker risk (due to poor health of SEBs).

In this climate of lack of access to low cost debt, the equity investors have to take on more risk y assuming more debt. They find it difficult to recycle the equity capital into the next project, as equity gets stuck in one project. Regulatory restrictions further limit the access to alternate sources of equity capital. Even Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) market is weak due to poor enforcement of Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPOs).

So overall, there is much that is desired on the policy as well as at the finance front.

We need to diversify our sources of finance. The report on “Financing Renewable Energy in India” by Nextant Inc(under PACE-D) has suggested various innovative mechanisms which can give a boost to sustainable flow of finance in Indian solar sector. These include green bonds, Off grid Fund and infrastructure debt fund backed by sovereign guarantee. In order to enhance access to tax benefits, India can make tax credits tradable (like in USA) and even allow tax efficient trusts (like in Singapore). REC market Maker (RMM) is a particularly interesting concept to increase bankability of RECs. Besides, securitization of loans, crowd sourcing, risk insurance instruments, etc. are few other innovative mechanisms worth exploring, which are being used in certain parts of world.

As per the PwC report on “Financial engineering as a means to support Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission”, India will require an estimated INR 172,338 crores of investment to meet the target of 22 GW of solar power by 2022. We need to explore ways to catalyze private sector participation in providing capital for manufacturing as well as project development.

The India is one of the sun’s most favored nations, blessed with about 5,000 TWh of solar insolation every year. The solar technology is maturing, projects like Green Corridor are being implemented and even grid parity projections have improved to as early as 2016-17 from end of the current decade. Reasons to be optimistic are manifold.

With right policies and best financial instruments, solar power can make energy accessible to the vast Indian population, besides create millions of jobs and help India achieve energy independence.

To understand is to transform what is.

Individualism as is being understood presently seems to be a misplaced concept. When man can’t survive in complete isolation and is dependent upon multitude of things- air, water, sunlight, food and most importantly is ‘social animal’- then how can anything be even thought in terms of an individual? An individual can’t exist! It is a symbiotic existence only! The world exists because it has ‘others’ in it.

Some excerpts from the documentary Zeitgeist:

World peace will be a reality only when we believe: My country is the world and my religion is to do good. There would be no reason for peace to be found or attained!

Challenging one’s systems usually results in insult as apprehensions for being wrong is erroneously associated with failure. When in fact, to be proven wrong should be celebrated for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, furthering awareness. There is no such thing as smart human being, for it is merely a matter of time that their ideas are updated.

Earlier, people didn’t know about how nature works, so they invented God in his own image! A guy who gets angry when things are not done right… who brings floods… destruction. All religions have common threat. Religious beliefs have caused more fragmentation than any other ideology! Even every religion has thousands of divisions!

Moreover it is the propagation of false assumption of separation through rejection out of symbiotic relationship of life.  There is no such thing as independence for the whole universe is a unified system of interdependent variables. Each cause with a reaction! It all depends on how well we connect with the world around us.

My future generation can’t hope to inherit a sustainable, peaceful and socially just world unless every child growing in all the underdeveloped countries can also hold same expectation. We have to see that whole world is our community and not just of humans but a community of plants, animals and human… we need to take care of the whole community!

To be environmentally as well as socially aware and sensitive! That’s what will bring joy and pleasure… sustainable! We can call it spirituality… but the fact is joy comes from bliss of connectedness!

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final world in reality - Martin Luther King Jr.

When we understand that the integrity of our personal existences are completely dependent on the integrity of everything else in our world… we have truly understood the meaning of unconditional love. 

For love is existentiality… seeing everything in you and everything as you! For you are all everything as one.

The real resolution is the resolution of consciousness.  

Each one of us first need to eliminate the divisionary materialistic noise we have been conditioned to believe is true. To understand is to transform what is.

As the contagion spreads...

As the toppling of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt spreads the contagion of democracy to the hitherto untouched ones of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, a new file of facts is taking shape revealing the disheartening state of human rights in the region and the commendable manner in which normalcy was maintained by the ruling regimes (till date) with the allowance of world’s most ‘proclaiming’ democracy – the United States of America.

Violent suppression of protesters follows the anti-government protests demanding the ousting of the respective dictators in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and most recently Morocco as well. These nations have seen the same rulers for more than three decades with state emergency in place in some. These being developing countries, huge inequalities persist in here with degrading labor rights and inhuman working conditions. And now when popular protests are demanding the change in governance they are being met with arms and army. The fact that every one of these dictator happens to be a US ally, though for easily imaginable reasons, makes the mockery of the ideology of democracy.

It has become imperative for the world today to relearn the ideals of democracy and to have the same definition in all ‘democracies’, for modifications destroy the spirit of an ideology altogether. Literally democracy is defined as ‘the government of the people, by the people and for the people.’ And ‘people’ is an inclusive term unaffected by the social, cultural, political and economic status of the people. Yet this doesn’t seem to be the case given the impact these very attributes of political parties and their associates have on almost every elections round the world. Concept of lobbying mars the concept of fair elections; still, a debate is on in India whether to legalize lobbying in the wake of Nira Radia case.

Democracy ensures its citizen a right to express discontent with the working of the government and the ‘development’ course it takes for him. Yet this very right gets curtailed under the draconian rules of sedition. Democracy ensures egalitarian society in terms of equal opportunity but even this facet gets nullified when development is projected as growth in GDP rather than improvement in the critical indices such as IMR, MMR, HDI, unemployment rate, poverty index etc.

And shouldn’t standing to the ideals of democracy mean supporting the human rights in the countries one is associated with, at least the minimum as defined by the International Human Rights Commission. Yet as the world’s largest democracy, India remains silent on the violent suppression of the peaceful protesters against autocracy in their nations. No official statement condemning these atrocities being committed by state on its pupil has been issued. There can be many reasons to it. One- we don’t want to skew our relations with oil exporting majors in the event of the present regimes surviving the protests. Two- we don’t want to give the dissidents at home a reason to amplify their voices. And most importantly we don’t want to fret our ‘Big Brother’ by doing so, for he happens to an ally of almost all the dictators. India one of the founding members of an association as bold as NAM is fast becoming indifferent.

Diplomacy is certainly at the heart of business, international peace and cooperation, but for a country aiming for a permanent membership in UNSC (United Nations Security Council), it becomes essential to take an uninfluenced and individual stand on issues affecting the general well being of nations and their people. Until the world powers unite for the cause of human rights and see to their adherence, violations as those happening today will continue.

Breaking News!

A youngster (Chotu Sharma) in his twenties threw a four year girl out of a moving train after a heated argument with child’s family over a seat. The girl is critically injured. (Source: The Hindu, Dec 9)

The news left me appalled and the sheer disgust I felt at the heinous act is beyond description. The loathing was too strong for me to just ignore the not-so-unusual incident. Yet for a while a sense of bewilderment engulfed me, waking me up to the stark reality of the violence ridden world from which the safe havens of my college keep me ignorant or rather subconscious. The only question that was haunting me then was: How? How can a man’s tolerance degrade enough to go berserk with one of the most innocent form of life? The most troublesome fact being, this is not uncommon!

Instead of the general bypassing this news as one of its kind, I tried to find what can be the plausible cause for the mounting levels of violence at an unprecedented rate. Is it the manifestation of one’s insecurity (Adler-ism), egotism (Freud-ism), or simply is man taking to barbarism back again?

Through ages have mankind progressed to its present state of ‘agreeable and civilized’ societal living where values, ethics, morals, and customs are said to be the foundation of a sustainable society. Although, treading on the path of violence have civilizations transformed with pacifism as the ultimate goal, but the transformation occurring today at the psychological level are unsettling. The heightened sense of individualism clubbed with the escalating ambitions are loosening the social framework which binds the mankind, diluting the very humane nature of our species. Never before have psychological scientists fared so well!

Change is the only constant, yet the changes can be monitored and directed within capacity. Ours is a society in transition with people like Aung San Su kyi at one extreme and the likes of Chotu Sharma or Hafeez Sayeed at the other. The growing intolerance, impatience, short-temperedness and egotism amongst many are a reflection of the direction we are moving towards. In the race of God-knows-what, we forget that life is all about being happy and happiness can never amalgamate with negativity.

The need of the hour is for each one of us to reflect and dwell upon the changes that our happening within us, for violence starts from one’s thoughts. Every single being is an important strand in the chain of change. We can bring the change only by being the change!

Drenched in Blue!

A company with a name that may take more than three guesses to hit upon the right pronunciation and is a misnomer, Schlumberger (not a Mc.D. alternative) happens to be a world leader in OFS (Oil Field Services). I am not campaigning for SLB.

But what keeps SLB apart from rest of the companies is its work culture and never ending list of safety rules and policies. Employees here walk into the office as if on some river side picnic; from Bermuda shorts to bathroom slippers… you may go as comfortable as you want to be. And dare you call even the manager but by his name!

Cool is the word around here… and Blue (read balooo) goes the color!

At one point you happen to be fiddling with your laptop keys and at other cleaning grease/rust from some tool. SLB people don’t spend money on gyms; the work here makes sure that within 2-3 months of working one can boast of biceps, triceps, even six pack! The well site experiences capacitate you to survive in all types of extreme and hostile surroundings. One day you use your five starred bathroom or enjoy an exquisite spa, the other two days you are searching for a covert place between bushes in some field (while on job).

To all aspiring real time heroes/ heroines : apply for SLB field engineer post. JFE, SFE, GFE, FSM will be your designation as you get promoted (this happens really fast!). No sooner did you enter the premises, the obsession for three letter abbreviations, hits you hard; and if you are not good at remembering full forms, tch tch! You better become one!

SLB spoils you for choices as to where to spend the colossal amount of money you get for salary in a short period of time that you get off from work! Love for each other drives the engineers to work even on weekends (there is generally no one back home)!

It has been 27 days since my association with SLB, yet the post which is so warranted, comes this late for the want of a ‘kick’ ( ref. ‘Inception’) which was received while we interns were struggling to catch the very movie on time. Having been kept waiting for the company car to drop us for a 5:30 show for more than 30 minutes (this generally doesn’t happen, i.e. car getting late), we decided to go by an auto which would take ten minutes to get us there. It was already 5:25.

We had hardly moved some yards when our senior employee who had our tickets(we were going to join them) called up, only to ask us to get down from the auto, which we managed with great difficulty given water logged roads. Now SLB has a PROPER driving policy, going by which employees aren’t supposed to travel in public vehicles for they don’t have seat belts! K

A car was on its way to us. We were waiting (5:30 now). We mounted the car and the driver chuckled: ‘you had better used the auto… you would have reached quickly’. I was praying that we reach before intermission.

Reason being: an SLB car has max speed limit of 65k/h and sudden breaks/acceleration can bring the driver to a warning letter! Even the bikers overtake Innova on an empty highway as we graciously and safely once covered 150 kms in glorifying 5 hours!

Well, fixing our seat belts, without which the driver won't even start, delayed us all by 2 more minutes. But all’s well that ends well! We managed to grab our seats by 5:50. Besides the 150 bucks ticket, the movie was worth taking all the trouble for.

P.S. : There is much more to Schlumberger (SLB) than what you just read.

WORTH OF LABOUR : what is the basis?

Every time I hire a rick, I find myself at conflict with my own thoughts and beliefs. As always that one question pops its head before me- who decides the worth of labour?

When I happen to observe someone paying less to the rick-puller, I feel disgust at the unfair treatment being met out to the less privileged. But ironically though, when the rick puller happens to ask more than I ‘expect’ him to ask for, I am not able to decide whether he is at fault or not. Since the world largely lives on the lines ‘an eye for an eye’, the rick puller is entirely justified in making up for the loss he incurred at the hands of his previous customers as well as to be prepared for the impending less generous ones. Moreover, righteousness can never exist in isolation.

But this is how I try to justify his demand for ‘larger sum’. But the basic flaw remains, who decides his fair due? And he is not just this rick puller but every less equal man inhabiting this earth of equals. Today, only our species type i.e. homo- sapiens unites us all, otherwise ours happens to be disastrously diverse species with respect to the living conditions varying from that of kings to vermin.

Since ages our fathers and fore fathers have lived by Darwin’s words –‘Survival of the fittest’, even before these were coined. Exploitation of the unprivileged has been the foundation of all large and glorious empires one may recall, be it the Greeks, the Sumerians, the Mayas or the Spartans to name a few. When the fashion of slavery passed away, the division of Society was called upon to help continue the powerful to be in power. The centuries of atrocities committed upon their mute bearers did force the predators a lot of times to shun the inhuman crimes only to resort to some newer forms.

Now that the age we live in is the one of Gandhi, Tolstoy and Teresa, lot of consciences have come out of their deep slumber. Everywhere the word goes of setting up of an Egalitarian society where every man is Equal! Ask anyone round the corner and he will empathise (and not just sympathise) with cause of poor and less-privileged.

One thing that bewilders me a lot is the all pervasive attitude of people who second the idea of equality, while at the same time strive madly to be superior to all others. How can the two contentious thoughts co-exist in a single brain? Leaving aside the whole world and talking of the faction I belong to, being of engineers, I get upset every time I witness a discussion over salaries. Majority of students seem to be nurturing the thoughts of being a millionaire/billionaire and to lead an easy, luxurious and glamorous life. If given their way, everyone starts living the way they have imagined themselves to, would the world be able to move ahead even a single day? Because no one is there to toil, sweat and do physical labour which form the basis of every industry or household. We happen to be forwarding the concept of individualism as well as socialism, what an irony!

Qualitatively the amount of money at any given time on earth can be assumed to be roughly constant. So progress anywhere is bound to happen at the cost of others. As all the economic surveys have shown, less than twenty percent of world’s richest possess more than eighty percent of world’s wealth and this ratio is worsening with every passing second. And satirically, yet unsurprisingly, half of them are the world’s biggest philanthropists!

The problem lies in our grading of labour. Today mental labour is given too much significance over physical labour. Given, that monitoring, planning and innovation have brought us to this state of technological advancement which have transformed and raised our standard of living, but of how many. On the shoulders of those carrying the building blocks have all the Pharaohs ascended to glory. We praise Shah-jahan for the unparalleled beauty of the Taj, while blatantly ignoring the mutilation of twenty thousand artists at his command.

World has become more knowledge intensive, but what is to happen of those who live on their daily toils and unfortunately had no access to education? Since we are more privileged with skills to mould things and situations to our favour, we have taken upon ourselves the power of deciding the worth of labour hence fate of all as well. And because decision involves mental brooding (huff!) such jobs ought to be awarded generously and the work involving physical labour, which any one with functional limbs can do, deserve meagre pays. Isn’t this feudalism in a form pertinent to contemporary world?

Some say that the less privileged have chosen their ways and hence, deterministically can come at pars with others in society. Ha! How can the ones having no choice at their disposal be the choosers? And when they have been made to believe in their inefficacy through centuries of suppression, how can we expect them to be dreamers and visionaries? Though some do overcome all the adversities and rise to levels unthinkable of them, but then they happen to be few amongst millions.

Even during the recent global crisis, the fat-pay CEOs put up a brave fight against their salary dilution. Pink slips were offered to scores of employees, but dare anyone talk about the salaries at management level! In the course of inflation, everyone tries to save as many pennies possible from the ones lacking it the most viz. vendors, rick-pullers, labourers, etc. but then the world moves on ability, and extracting money out of others is a skill, isn’t it?

Giving out alms isn’t a solution but to make their receivers able to help themselves and giving every person his due. The gap between rich and poor has already reached its threshold of sustainability and is still widening. If not controlled soon, it would give rise to a mass awakening of the silent sufferers that would shake the foundations of this deaf world! The facade of hypocrisy won’t last for long.

Quoting Albert Einstein:

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

Not mastery but service, will lead people in the right way.”

Her

Hands clutched to her side,

Sporting a subtle smile on those composed features,

Enters the sublime slender form,

Perfectly feminine yet exuding confidence to melt mountains;

Even her slow pace doesn’t subdue the vivacity

Which, as the Lady glides,

Inculcates in her beholder an ardour for life!

Her conspicuous eyes speak of compassion and wisdom,

Yet furtively smirking and admiring at the same time.

Impeccable lips sprinkle words in a fashion,

Even profanities would appear enticing to ears.

She leaves you besotted...

A Sui Generis!