Payne Institute Fellow Joshua W. Busby, Sarang Shidore, Fellow Johannes Urpelainen, and Director Morgan D. Bazilian write about how achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement will be difficult without ultimately phasing out coal in India, among other countries. April 20, 2021.
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group student worker Elijah Mt.Castle looks at the Similipal National Park that has been aflame since February 24th 2021, and is now contained according to government officials. The associated tiger sanctuary also caught fire. The park, located in Odisha India, is an important biosphere for the country. Roughly one third of the forest has been destroyed or gutted for fire breaks. Fires have also been raging in surrounding areas for weeks. March 12, 2021.
Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian, Victoria Cuming, and Thomas Kenyon write about some countries with large renewables markets have sought to create domestic supply chains and jobs by implementing local-content requirements. The focus is on three key renewables markets with local-content requirements – Brazil, India and South Africa – and analyze whether these rules have helped create local manufacturing capacity or benefited local companies. November 16, 2020.
Payne Institute Senior Research Associate Greer Gosnell and Payne Faculty Fellow Ian Lange write about how India’s government has in recent months reaffirmed its commitment to the development of an expanded domestic gas grid and cross-border interconnections such as the long-mooted Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline. But the experience of the US gas market suggests that smart and considered government gas transport regulation could play as crucial a role in boosting Indian gas demand as simply increasing pipeline capacity. October 15, 2020.
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group researchers Tilottama Ghosh, Christopher Elvidge, Feng-Chi Hsu, Mikhail Zhizhin, and Morgan Bazilian wrote how the monthly Suomi National Polar-orbiting (NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day–Night Band (DNB) composite reveals the dimming of lights as an effect of the lockdown enforced by the government of India in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes in lighting are examined by creating difference maps of a pre-pandemic pair and comparing it with two pandemic pairs. October 10, 2020.
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group writes about how electric power services are fundamental to prosperity and economic development. Disruptions in the electricity power service can range from minutes to days. Such events are common in many developing economies, where the power generation and delivery infrastructure is often insufficient to meet demand and operational challenges. Yet, despite the large impacts, poor data availability has meant that relatively little is known about the spatial and temporal patterns of electric power reliability. Here, we explore the expressions of electric power instability recorded in temporal profiles of satellite observed surface lighting collected by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) low light imaging day/night band (DNB). September 30, 2020.
The Payne Institute looks at the gas flaring in India. According to the IEA, India is the fourth largest refiner of oil (behind the US, Russia, and China), and the third largest importer of crude oil and LNG (behind China and the US), though is outranked by 24 other countries on oil production, with declining trends. September 3, 2020.
Payne Fellow Todd Moss, Morgan Bazilian, John Ayaburi, and Jacob Kincer write that while the electricity access rate is regularly measured in most countries, there are no routinely tracked metrics that measure reliability. This paper presents a new approach that: (1) aggregates all available country data on reliability; (2) defines a minimum threshold metric for ‘reasonable reliability’; and (3) estimates the number of people without ‘reasonably reliable’ electricity services. We estimate the number of people without access to reliable electricity is approximately 3.5 billion. This new metric provides a more granular view of the enormous energy access gap globally, and insights for future investment and policy decisions. August 19, 2020.
The Payne Institute Earth Observation Group research provides the data for this piece on how COVID-19 has disrupted economic activity. Quantifying this disruption is challenging. Traditional national account estimates, the official government measure for economic activity, are not very helpful for that. To monitor economic activity in times like these, one needs instead measures that are available at higher frequency and higher spatial granularity- for example at the district level. In India, the amount of electricity used (measured as total consumption) and the intensity of lights in the evening (measured as lights per area) are useful proxy indicators. Electricity consumption is measured daily at the state-level and changes reveal information about the economy. August 11, 2020.
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Willie Helms reports that an ongoing fire in India exploded on July 22, 2020, injuring three people. Over the last two months, Oil India Limited (OIL) has suspended operations at well number 5 of the Baghjan oil field, located in the Tinsukia district of Assam, India. Problems originally started on May 27, a blowout occurred, allowing gas to spew uncontrollably from the well. Fueled by the gas, a large fire broke out on June 9, killing two firefighters. August 5, 2020.