The Puzzles of Energy Trilemma

Views are Personal - Dr. Anandajit Goswami

The Energy Trilemma is a word which includes a dilemma in it. Essentially, the dilemma is to ensure human progress and meet civilizational needs by balancing the needs of energy equity and environmental sustainability.

If we look onto the three planks of the energy trilemma viz. energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability, the puzzle will become clearer. Any country, for the betterment of quality of life will need energy which is clean and secure for a long time in the future.

Hence, for progress, development of human society, energy security is a must. This energy security definitely also imbibes the quality of energy which is being supplied. To give an analogy, India can only grow and develop when all the 10 crore rural households  are provided with a clean energy for cooking like LPG in a sustained way for a long term. However, energy security is not enough.

The sufficiency condition of the energy trilemma comes from the remaining two planks of - energy equity and sustainability. The moment these two planks are introduced into the  energy trilemma definitional frame, the picture becomes a little murky. 

By imposing these two essential planks into the energy trilemma, it is ensured that questions of energy justice and social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability are plugged in within the energy discourse. Energy justice, equity and the social, economic and environmental domains of sustainability are quite complicatedly inter related.

Hence,  for defining human progress, it is essential that any country grows, meets her energy needs by balancing the pressing questions of energy equity and justice and addresses the social, economic and environmental domains of sustainability. Justice is an ideal and abstract term and takes a long time to achieve. 

Moreover, justice and all domains of sustainability are very much perspective dependent. It is being guided by the existing and futuristic policies of different agents in a society and how it shapes up in future.  In an anthropocentric world of today which started with a Descartian thinking, it is essential that the planks of energy trilemma be solved. Some of the principles of solving this can be borrowed from various ecological movements, environmental justice related movements across the world complemented by local solutions.

A country like India, which stands  very low at 109 in World Energy Council’s Energy Trilemma Index has a long way to go to solve the puzzles of Energy Trilemma . It will  go a long way and take some time and tangible actions beyond rhetoric in ensuring that India also stands together with developed countries like Switzerland and much above countries like Gabon, Namibia, South Africa, Thailand, China, Brazil which are all doing much better than India in the context of World Energy Council’s Energy Trilemma Index as of now. A country which created the birth of decentralized Gram Swaraj movement by the Father of the Nation  only has a bright future ahead to solve this puzzle and move upward in this index.

'Sustainability with music: What does Bach’s Musical Offering tell us about Sustainability?'

Disclaimer: Views are personal

One of my favourite historical references to understand sustainability is linked to the story of Bach’s Musical Offering. Bach had once made an impromptu visit to King Frederick, the Great of Prussia. On his visit he was requested to improvise on a theme presented by the King to him. Bach had no clue about the theme. Bach composed a musical offering and made fifteen two part inventions. These two part inventions were later written by Lewis Carroll in 1895. While explaining these inventions Carroll referred to Achilles and Tortoise from Zeno. Here in turn, I am borrowing it from Carroll and Bach. What did these inventions say about sustainability?

The inventions essentially talked about reasoning and then reasoning (about reasoning) and a reasoning about (reasoning about reasoning). The loop of musical reasoning continued this way in Bach’s musical offering to King Frederick.  Lewis Carroll proved that if we use an infinite regress of reasoning then reasoning actually becomes impossible. Today, often the notions of sustainability and the irresponsible actions taken by various sections of the society towards denial of climate, ecologically, culturally, sociologically and politically responsible actions are defended by means of an infinite regress of reasoning which was explained by Bach and later on by Lewis Carroll. A pattern of this infinite regress of reasoning by different groups of countries exists clearly in climate negotiations and sustainability related discourses.

Prof. Albert Einstein said that we cannot have the same way of thinking, reasoning to solve the problems which created them. Similarly, when we are at the brink of an anthropocene driven by human materialism, consumerism and capitalism interfering in the natural processes destroying the mother earth, the importance of breaking the inertia of infinite regress of reasoning has to stop. Sustainability can then only be attained on this planet at the backdrop of an anthropocentric culture of complexity.

She came like a birthday story!

Two years back like every year
She arrived and the year was quite rare
It was another birthrate
The same fate
As I thought
And lost and caught
In the cobweb of the same date
The same two numbers at the same rate
Yet it was different
A new number date
Started but still yet
She was direct in my cobweb
Took away all the ebb
Swaying and slaying the faith
On the corpse of the day weaning hate
Emotions, did I see you for the first time ever
This way never
Hesitant, diffident, far and straight
Yes it was the story of a date
The same birthday of many stories not to rate