Putting a spin on Cotton

Hand picked cotton from India fed the English Industrial revolution... at what cost?

Microsping start-up is all geared to introduce a micro-revolution in the cotton industry.  In order to understand why, we need to go back a in time in order to set the tone...

It is 1740, India is under the grip of the East India Company.  To tap into the economic potential of their Jewel in the Crown, rail-roads, bridges, canals and ports are developed in order to facilitate the transport of raw Cotton from India's hinterland to the ports on the west coast.  The systematic plunder of the country leads to to the great famine of 1770.  Towards the turn of the century, British textile mills are now so mechanised that in order to feed this mammoth industry, American cotton (cheaper and of better quality) is imported.  In order to ship cotton, it has to be packed into bales, a manual process in India that requires over 600 man-hours per bale.  The cotton export in India slows down, unable to compete with the Americans.  The American civil-war quickly turns the tables as blockades of southern American ports by the confederates stops the supply of the raw material to the English mills.  For a while the English industry turn to Egyptian cotton, eventually leading to that nation's bankruptcy.

In the mean time, India's cotton production had vastly improved and much effort was put in by the colonial rulers to reduce the price of export to a minimum with mechanised baling.  The situation was aptly summarised by Gandhi,

1. English people buy Indian cotton in the field, picked by Indian labor at seven cents a day, through an optional monopoly.
2. This cotton is shipped on British ships, a three-week journey across the Indian Ocean, down the Red Sea, across the Mediterranean, through Gibraltar, across the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean to London. One hundred per cent profit on this freight is regarded as small.
3. The cotton is turned into cloth in Lancashire. You pay shilling wages instead of Indian pennies to your workers. The English worker not only has the advantage of better wages, but the steel companies of England get the profit of building the factories and machines. Wages; profits; all these are spent in England.
4. The finished product is sent back to India at European shipping rates, once again on British ships. The captains, officers, sailors of these ships, whose wages must be paid, are English. The only Indians who profit are a few lascars who do the dirty work on the boats for a few cents a day.
5. The cloth is finally sold back to the kings and landlords of India who got the money to buy this expensive cloth out of the poor peasants of India who worked at seven cents a day. (Fisher 1932 pp 154–156)

 This further ruined the country, leaving its footprint and consequences long after the English masters had departed.

The legacy

Cotton trucked to baling factories

Today, Indian cotton industry relies on the legacy of its British masters.   The commercial cotton industry has not evolved for lack of leadership and innovation.  Cotton is trucked to a baling facility (an energy intensive process), the bales are carried to cotton mills that unpack the bales (another energy intensive process) and finally spun and weaved into yarn.  Bales where introduced specifically to address shipping issues to English mills.  So why do we still bale cotton when spinning and weaving is relative stone throw from the cotton fields?

Spinning a new era

Enters Microspin, a small Chennai based start-up company that is turning the industry on its head.  The concept behind Microspin's business model is simplicity and efficiency.  Get rid of the baling process!  Spin the cotton next to where its grown by introducing micro-spin setups using electronic controls to lower the energy cost and render the process more efficient.  Not only does the model makes perfect sense in light of the history of cotton farming in India, but the greatest contribution is the value addition the farmers can leverage with this set up, allowing them to sell spun cotton at a higher cost than the raw material.

New solar panel promises cheaper electricity

An amazing report on a new solar panel design by V3Solar on blog tech CleanTechnica.  The new panels concentrate solar light up to 30 times on the conventional cell, increasing power output, yet keeping prices lower than conventional electricity.  This could be the revolution India needs to move it out of its energy woes.  Decentralised, privatised, democratized energy production away from the corrupt and inefficient public sector.

Poor roads cause fuel overconsumption, a report.

Various sources report (here and here) report on an interesting study by the IIM university of Calcutta on the rise in fuel consumption contributed from our poor road conditions.  The report estimates a whopping 87,500 crore INR (about 15 billion USD) is lost annually in fuel bills and at toll gate queues.

Estimating the various average speeds on our countries highways and the number of times vehicles have to stop at plazas, compared to an ideal road without stops, the study reveals a dire picture.

In view of recent price hikes on petrol throughout India, this news is not good for the current government.  The report argues that the fuel subsidies cost to the government is 60,000 crore INR, which would be largely compensated by having quality roads.

Another article throws further light on the recent increase in petrol prices, demonstrating that the government isn't actually loosing money on the subsidies.  In fact Indian has one of largest taxes on fuel in the world, on par with European nations and thus the government's increase in fuel price is yet another way to increase their revenues.  Probably to fuel yet more loss making projects or should I say scams?

Energy consumption world map

I found this interesting interactive workbook that display energy consumption trends worldwide in 2010 and 2011.  It makes for a fascinating discovery.  All data is expressed in terms of equivalent oil consumption.  In other words, weather the energy source is Natural gas, nuclear, coal, oil, hydro electricity or renewable energy (solar and wind presumably), they are all expressed as oil quantities in equivalent energy unit.

Here are a couple of screen captures I have taken,

Coal : You will notice at the top 3 drop down menus that allow you to select the energy source.  Also note that these graphs are per capita consumption figures, ie the amount of that energy source consumed in the entire country divided by the population.  Of course no one burns coal nowadays or very few households, but a lot of coal is used to produce electricity, and this is then consumed by the industry, households, offices and that not.

The biggest consumers of coal energy are the US, Australia, Kazakhstan, China, South Korea, Czech Republic, South Africa and Poland.

 Note however, that the consumption ranking are relative to the overall consumption.  Australia, which tops the list consumed a little of 2 tonnes of oil equivalent of coal in 2011.

Oil : This the highest contribution of energy source in the world in 2011.  However, surprisingly Singapore tops the list of per capita consumer followed by Kuwait and, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.  In other words they burn a lot of oil for their energy use (may it electricity or transport needs).  The US which is often singled out as a oil guzzler only comes 9th in the list.

Actual oil consumed by Singapore in 2011 was a little over 11 tonnes per person.

Natural Gas : The natural gas is another product of the oil industry and shows again an unexpected statistic.  The two countries that peak the trend are Qatar and Trinidad & Tobago!!  Of all nations I was surprised... but then again we all need electricity to run our ACs in the summer! 

The energy consumed in 2011 by Trinidad was a little over 14 tonnes of oil energy equivalent.

Nuclear Energy : Here, no surprises, France is the biggest consumer of nuclear energy in the world followed closely by ..... Sweden, not a nation traditionally associated with nuclear energy, but nonetheless, because of its lower population, its energy consumption per person is high. The top 5 consumers are all in Europe.

The nuclear energy consumed in 2011 by France was a little over 1.5 tonnes of oil energy equivalent.

Hydro Electricity :  Norway is the staggering leader in this field, with a 30% of all worlwide hydro energy per person consumption.  Again, do note that this is not total energy, only per person.  For example the biggest producer of hydro energy is Russia, while the biggest consumer of such energy is China (presumably it imports its excess consumption from Russia).  Hoever, per capita consumption is very low due to its large population.

Norway consumed an equivalent of a  little over 5 tonnes of oil energy in 2011.

Renewable energies : Denmark is the leader in this field, they are very active with various schemes of wind and biomass production. Apart from second placed New Zealand, the biggest consumption of renewable energy from comes Europe, where countries like Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Spain have active wind and solar energy policies.

Denmark consumed an equivalent of 0.6 tonnes of oil energy from renewable sources.

To make the study a little more complete, I downloaded the data from which these plots where compiled and did a few more of my own...

Energy source distribution and total consumption per country
The plot show the total energy consumption by each country and the source of that energy.  Interestingly the most energy hungry people on earth are not the usual culprit.... (the units are in tonnes of equivalent oil energy)

Green credentials
In this plot I worked out and ranked the percentage contribution from each energy source for the country's per capita consumption.  The rank is from highest green source of energy to the most polluting source.  So for example, Norway which is at the top of this list sources in excess of 60% of its per capita energy from green renewable and hydro power source. The 11 lowest countries of this list all depend on fossil fuel for their energy needs.

Sustainable credentials:
Of course, the picture is not quite complete without also looking at the total consumption of a country.  Poorer country may not be able to afford fancy sources of energy, but nonetheless leave a  smaller footprint on the planet as their energy consumption are more frugal.  Here is one last plot that has a double ranking.  Ranked for frugality as well as green energy consumption.  What I would classify as a sustainable energy consumption rank.  The lower the energy consumption the higher on the list, but if a country consumes a lot of energy  but obtains it from from green sources, then it too should be higher up on this list.  This is the case with Brazil in 10th place on this list, it has a higher energy consumption per capita than the next 3 countries below it but its ranking is due to the fact that it obtains large part of this energy need from green sources.

Carbon Neutral Tamil Nadu by 2020?

Abdul Kalam, our ex-President has shared his dream of a carbon neutral Tamil Nadu by 2020.  This report, courtesy  of the newIE, highlights Kalam's proposal which consist of:

1. an increase in tree plantation in the state, 

Kalam said 100 million trees will absorb two billion kg of carbon dioxide and give to Tamil Nadu 1.4 billion kg of oxygen per year.

he said every litre of fossil fuel burnt contributes 2.7 kg of carbon dioxide- equivalent emissions. 

2. a reduction in fuel consumption by better town planning and infrastructure

He said that improper planning results in intra-city micro-migration and each city even one with a population of five million should be reorganised so that it comprises a city centre containing administrative, government and large corporate offices surrounded by satellite micro-cities with less than a million people each. 

he stressed on three aspects of urban planning which include mass transit like metros between micro city zones and all major locations, medium scale transport system,   besides provision of bicycling using exclusive bicycling lane like in Netherlands.Blaming transport sector for about 13 per cent of total emissions worldwide 

I agree with him , that much fuel burning can be saved by better infrastructure in India in general. As for being a carbon neutral state, it's going to require substantial reorganisation of our energy production industry as majority of electricity today in Tamil Nadu comes from coal powered stations.

Sustainability, yet another opportunity for corruption?

As this article points out, renewable energy is a growing business today, and who says economic growth says scams in India.  This is a pet project of our central government and a lot of tax payer's money is being channelled into renewable energy projects.  Already there is something fishy about some of the institutions appointed to oversee this development.

Has the world already forgotten Fukushima?

The media has moved on and along with it we have conveniently forgotten the Japanese nuclear disaster of Fukushima.  Japan fights its ghosts, India moves ahead with its nuclear project and an international disaster still awaits us.  Can we truly do away with fission energy?  The world is in a precarious balance.  Our energy requirements are real, our old world resources dwindling, the promise of new technology still a mirage.  How do we reconcile these two points?

Nuclear energy is a bridge between yesterday and tomorrow and in the process we play russian roulette with the world as we know it.  The world needs a diversity in energy resources so that never again we are dependent on a single source.  It is evermore pressing that we disconnect our centralised energy networks and we move towards decentralised, localised and diversified sources of energy so that we become more sustainable.  As cheap solar panels become available, wind farms multiply and bio-fuels come online, sustainable energy production is the only way forward. Can it meet our growing demands?  In the mean time, spare a few seconds everyday and keep in mind those brave souls fighting the demons of Fukushima.

The longest lasting light bulb

Incredible as it sounds, this light bulb in the fire station of Livermore (California, USA) has been switched on since 1901!  It has 111 years.  A permanent webcam monitors the bulb which has already outlived ttwo webcams.

Solarator, 2kVA, Made in India

Sustainable and cheap electricity, the solarator is ideal for your country property or farm.  It generates electricity during the day time to run a pump or some electrical equipment such as drill or a saw.  It can also be used to recharge a UPS system.  It comes equipped with 4 or 8 batteries depending on requirements and therefore has enough back up to provide electricity during the night.

Manufactured in Bangalore by a JV between HHV Solar Technologies Pvt. Ltd and  Raj Hamsa Pvt Ltd a company better known for its 2 seater microlight aircraft.  The price of a Solarator is expected to be about 3.5 lakh as it is yet to be fully commercialised in India.  It was recently displayed at the London Solar energy exhibition and made quite an impression, with many specialist in the field saying this is by far the best product on the market.  Way to go India!  For more details on the product check out this article.

Hybrid Power Plants

Anyone who has visited Tamil Nadu in the past several months would have understood what kind of living hell it is to be without power.

Most of the places in Tamil Nadu, for the past several months, go without power for as long as ten hours each day.

The TN government is aggressively going in for more Thermal Plants and Nuclear Power Plants. Hardly the sustainable answer to our problems.

The sustainable answers such as Wind, Solar have limitations and we are constantly challenging ourselves to overcome these limitations.

The hybrid power plant is one more step towards this. Will this gain wide acceptance?

Lions of renewable energy!

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_solar-power-cells-on-narmada-canal-to-light-up-rural-homes_1647046

The western Indian state of Gujarat is all set to become the first state in the country to generate solar power through panels mounted on a water body. Installation of panels on the canal will help in doing away with the need to acquire land. Evaporation of lakhs of litres of water will be prevented since the canal will be covered. And will generate clean energy. Generated solar power will be supplied to villages alongside the canal, which will lead to lower transmission losses aiding rural development. 

A great pioneering effort in renewable energy that will hopefully lead the way for future innovations!