Clean Energy & the Truth

This is where we would like to display our process, insights and outcome of the on-going course - SYSTEM DESIGN, Mentored by Praveen Nahar at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. Systems thinking utilizes habits, tools and concepts to develop an understanding of the interdependent structures of dynamic systems. When individuals have a better understanding of systems, they are better able to identify the leverage points that lead to desired outcomes.

Pic by : Anshuman Kumar

We i.e Anantha Krishnan & Upendra Shenoy have common interests so we took up the topic of Energy. We started our journey with an intent to PROMOTE CLEAN ENERGY THROUGH DESIGN THINKING. This is what we understood and mapped, from the primary research we did. On field and desk research. Insights have been amazing and intriguing.

Pic by : Bindiya Rani Mutum

We started with desk research, reading and questioning, following people, talking to them online, watching TED talks, checking out propaganda videos and latest tech updates, closely following TESLA and their moves, meeting people who live and perceive energy differently, going through case studies, how others have taken care of the same issue, and making sure not to miss the negative side of the coin, went through history & loads of statistics. We started to boil them down and mapping them out on paper, analyse them and observe patterns, derive relations and hence start connecting the dots. We would be periodically updating our mind maps and inferences here.

The initial mapping done was pinned up the board, and this is how it looked, further down the line we would zoom each area and defined as brief as possible.

The dark side of green energy? What could it be? Here we analyse the environmental impacts of wind, solar and hydroelectric power generation, in terms of wildlife & habitat, land usage, water usage, resource usage and man power.

The same was done with Hydro electric, bio gas energy and geo thermal energy generation.

Solar power paves way to clean bright future, but to produce solar PV panels we need hazardous material and processes that can have an impact on nature, these can be classified as embodied CO2 emission, as it is emitting CO2 only during manufacturing and not while operating. The rate at which CO2 can be offset by generating clean energy also matters.

Energy Demand for Irrigation shows that they majorly depend on the grid, which is unreliable and sees frequent power cuts. Solar has seen some growth. But not all can afford solar, though most of India is having great solar resource.