Energy options for Himachal Pradesh

The state of Himachal Pradesh located in the Western Himalayas (30.38°– 33.21° N, 75.77° – 79.07° E) covers a geographical area of 5.57 million hectares with 12 districts. The agro–climatic zones in the state are defined by altitude, climate, soil, precipitation and other geophysical parameters. It has a complex terrain with altituderanging from 300 m to 6700 m.The major vegetation types found in Himachal Pradesh are tropical, sub–tropical, wet-temperate, dry-temperate, sub–alpine and alpine, increasing with elevationandoften overlapping^[12-14]. According to 2011 census, the state has a population of 6.86 million. Within the state, livelihoods of people vary along the elevation zones and representative vegetation. Farming, horticulture, cattle rearing and tourism are the prominent sources of livelihood. The tropical, sub-tropical and wet-temperate parts of the state are more commercialized and favour intensive horticulture. The dry temperate to alpine zones prefer cattle rearing and subsistence farming to a major extent. The more urbanised hubs and tourist areas in the state are observed to have service based livelihoods. These complexities also result in varied energy usages and trends.

In the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh, thermal energy needs increase with elevation while vegetation becomes scantier towards alpine zones. As a result fuelwood consumption varies as 0.48–2.91 kg/person/day. This creates paucity of fuelwood in higher regions and people tend to depend on lower quality and polluting biomass. Kerosene consumption ranges as 0.23–0.43 liters and LPG consumption as 0.82–2.47 kg per capita per month from rural to urban area. Transporting LPG to inaccessible regions is a laborious task for the people residing in higher terrains.Himachal Pradesh has a commissionedelectricity capacity of 6728 MW and the major share of the installed capacity comes from central and joint sector. The state sector produces electricity from 579 MW of majorly hydro (394 MW) and renewable resources (185 MW). It has aconnected electricity grid length of 82742 km. Over 98.2 % of its 17495 villages are electrified.At the annual per capita electricity consumption of 829 units,the total consumption was 5814 Million Units (MU).Nearly half of this is consumed by industries and one-third by domestic sector. Since the demand for electricity is expected to increase with population and commercialization, the state intends to expand its capacity to 23000 MW by 2022. The cumulative hydro potential of Beas, Chenab, Sutlej, Ravi and Yamuna is estimated to be 23000 MW and the state is ambitiously planning ahead to utilize it to the best extent ^[14-16].Capacity addition based either on central coal based plants or state hydro projects would cost dear to the environment. In this context, decentralized energy options for Himachal Pradesh must be identified and nourished. Our study on bioenergy, solar and wind resources elicits interesting inferences for a decentralized energy plan for the state. Spatial data in addition to ground based information and literatures have facilitated our research on renewables in the region.