India too slow when compared to China in tapping chemical industries to ensure energy security

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

Indian policy makers should take a lesson from China, which is trying to capitalize on its chemical industries to ensure energy security for its people, according to an expert.

Secretary of the Chemical Industries Association and Nandini Consultancy Centre director N S Venkataraman said that India lacks a vision to be economic superpower and is totally dependent on imports of technology while China on the other hand is working out a strategy to be the global economic superpower.

He said that there may be theories that China’s chemical industries is struggling due to overcapacity, but this is untrue. Venkatraman said that the overcapacity production is part of China’s strategy to strengthen its energy security and plan to command the global economy.

Venkatraman said that the fall in solar panels was due to dumping of Polycrystalline Silicon photovoltiacs in the market by China. He said the prices fell and Indian policy makers were happy that the cost of solar energy has come down to around Rs 7.

But there is nothing to cheer about and prices of producing solar energy is likely to rise around Rs 14 in the next few years as the Chinese government has rules specifying for restriction on production of polysilicon. 

In India, at present there is no production of polycrystalline silicon where as India is drawing up ambitious plans to tap the potential for generating solar power. This will make India solely dependent on imports. Currently, the country imports polysilicon and wafers worth 4,000 tonnes per annum.

Not only that China also has a strategy on methanol. The methanol economy is a suggested future economy in which methanol replaces fossil fuels as a means of energy storage, ground transportation fuel, and raw material for synthetic hydrocarbons and their products. It offers an alternative to the proposed hydrogen economy or ethanol economy.

He said that coal is a major raw material for the production of methanol. He said coal is converted to methanol via synthesis gas, a mixture of carbon and hydrogen. He said China has increased the production of methanol from 11.30 million tonnes per annum in 2009 to 24.3 million tonnes per annum in 2012 and has a share of 57 per cent global installed capacity.

The focus of China is to use methanol in automobile, which is much cheaper than gasoline.   He said while China is preparing to safeguard its future by investing in Chemical industries as well as research and development, India on the other hand is more dependent on import of technologies from outside. He said that China’s share has doubled from six per cent in $2.2 trillion global chemical  industry to 12 per cent in the $3.5 trillion chemical sector by 2014. Surprisingly, India’s share has grown by a meagre one per cent.

He also highlighted the delays in implementing key projects in India. “There is also a need to set up chemical parks on barren lands to give boost to the chemical industries sector. The government should adopt a policy so that agriculture lands are not converted for industrial use as is done in China,” he added.