Ebola virus outbreak

Freetown, Photograph: Michael Duff/AP

As of August 2014 an epidemic of Ebola virus disease (EVD) is ongoing in West Africa. The outbreak is caused by one of the Ebola viruses, called simply, Ebola virus (EBOV). It is the most severe outbreak of Ebola yet recorded in regard to the number of human cases and fatalities, since records began in 1976. The outbreak began in Guinea in December 2013 but was not detected until March 2014,after which it spreadone, and Nigeria.

As of 11 August 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a total to date of 1,975 suspected cases and 1,069 deaths (1,251 cases and 686 deaths being laboratory confirmed),and formally designated the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern. This is a legal designation used only twice before (for the 2009 H1N1 (Swine Flu) pandemicand the 2014 resurgence of polio) and invokes legal measures on disease prevention, surveillance, control, and response, by 194 signatoy countries.

In June and July approximately 5,000 women and children in Sierra Leone died of diseases. The vast majority of these deaths were avoidable. For women and children in Sierra Leone, June and July were just like any other month: unnecessarily dangerous and largely forgotten.

The Ebola outbreak in the country killed 233 people during the same period, and the story made headlines around the worldwide.

Thinking on EnvironmenT.

Barry Commoner is one of the true pioneers of seminal thinking on environment , development and energy. Even though a biologist by training, he was a truly interdisciplinary scientist and thinker. Beginning with the early 1960s, he published many original works on the future of science, environment, development and energy. His major works include:Science and Survival (1963), The Closing Circle (1971), The Poverty of Power (1976), The Politics of Energy (1979), and Making Peace with the Planet (1990). In 1970, the ‘Time’ magazine featured him on their cover and hailed him as a standard bearer of “the emerging science of survival.” He combined science with activism. In 1980, he contested the American Presidential election as a

nominee of the Citizen’s Party.He justified his political involvement thus: “I am involved in politics because it has become crystal clear that the issues I have been concerned with—nuclear issues, environmental issues, energy issues—are not going to be solved simply by protest….the necessary big change could occur only from inside (the political spectrum). Public pressure from outside was not enough.” He liked to call himself a “congenial optimist”. Commoner’s contribution has been hailed as “a supremely important challenge to the morphing of Big Science into the handmaiden of the chemical and nuclear industries.” In this issue of Green Energy, following my brief introduction about Commoner, we present edited extracts of his 1979 book ‘The Politics of Energy’ (Pg.28). The book was intended as a critique of President Jimmy Carter’s energy plans. Carter had, during his election campaign, declared that nuclear power would be a “last resort”, a position he reiterated in his public statements. However, after his election, his private statements, energy plans and legislative action were all intended to promote an already dying nuclear industry in the United States. His administration, while paying lip service to solar energy, failed to take decisive action to promote it. In this book, Commoner spoke against nuclear power and for solar energy. For him, the term solar energy covers most forms of renewables—and rightly so—covering different forms of solar PV, solar thermal, wind power, biomass power, biofuels, marine renewables and even hydroelectric power. However the extract that follows in the next page pertains to only solar PV and solar thermal. He demonstrates why the Carter Plan, instead of solving, will merely prolong the energy crisis. Commoner sets forth the case for a new energy system based on renewable sources and examines the two choices we have—solar energy (including wind and bioenergy) or the nuclear breeder technology. Besides the inherent dangers of nuclear accidents and the unsolved problem of nuclear wastes with life of up to 2,00,000 years, he points to its prohibitive real costs. He shows how we can begin serious use of solar energy and all this in 1979!. His closely reasoned book leads to an inescapable conclusion: despite governmental arguments in favour of nuclear, the realities of the world are pointing us to the solar solution. It is a strong answer to many, including several Indians, who wrongly perceive nuclear power as a clean and sustainable energy source. There are some absences in Commoner’s vision. For eg, he does not talk of producing electricity from Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). That is because when he was writing this book, CSP was not commercially proven. As we all know, the first CSP project in the US came on stream in 1984 only. But overall, the vision he articulated was far beyond his times. In fact, it required great intellectual acumen and vision to declare in 1979, as he did,

that by the middle of the 21st Century, renewables will provide most of human energy requirements. Many right thinking people today recognize this. Many countries, especially in Europe, have realized the urgency of

such a transition. The International Energy Agency, which was till recently a strong advocate of fossil fuels, is now a convert, and talks about a 100 percent renewable energy economy. The IPCC recently came out with a detailed document articulating this theme. Such a hundred percent renewable system would necessarily need hydroelectric power which is the best base load source. Even with storage technologies being deployed, intermittent renewable's like wind and solar alone cannot sustain a national grid system. Commoner’s vision of a solar future encompasses all renewable's which ultimately originates from sun power, including hydroelectricity. In ‘The Politics of Energy’, he even devotes one chapter to discus show a transition to a solar system can be affected. Many in India, especially in the policy-making sphere, still continue to doubt the efficacy of renewables to provide a civilized future. We hope Commoner’s three-decade-old writing would be an eye-opener to them. Particularly noteworthy for Indian policymakers is what Commoner talks about government intervention to bring down solar prices, his forebodings about the real cost of nuclear power, and his suggestions for diverse strategies for solar energy development in the country vis-à-vis a monolithic policy. Typical top-down monolithic approaches do not give the best results.The edited extracts being published in the following pages— ‘Solar Versus Nuclear Energy: Politics of Choice’—are from Chapters 5 and 6 of the book, ‘The Politics of Energy’

Petroleum Pricing Policy in India

Petroleum product pricing in India is frequently seen as a black hole of subsidies. Economists and oil companies complain about the impacts those subsidies have on public finances, financial performance of oil companies and demand-side management. However, on closer analysis, the issue of petroleum product pricing in India is more complex than the one-way flow of subsidies that is mostly reported. The artificially low prices of petrol and diesel, however, do not reflect the realities of the high crude and refined product prices. These low prices offered to the public are subsidized by the government through the issuance of oil bonds, which are given exclusively to public sector fuel retailers in India.
The price of fuel in different countries is affected by many factors. Few major ones could be the cost of buying finished product in the country (country supplies usually cheaper than importing product), excise and tax rates levied by the Government, Government subsidies for fuel, Currency fluctuations or stability of the respective country, etc.
India was traditionally operating under an Administered Pricing Mechanism (APM) for petroleum products. This system was based on the retention price concept under which the oil refineries, oil marketing companies and the pipelines were compensated for operating costs and were assured a return of 12% post-tax on net worth. Under this concept, a fixed level of profitability for the oil companies was ensured subject to their achievement of specified capacity utilization.
But then in 1997, the Indian government took a strategic decision to deregulate the oil sector and dismantle the administered price mechanism (APM) existing in the Indian oil industry in three phases by the end of March 2002. It was broadly known as “APM dismantling”.
Since then, the Indian oil industry had been undergoing a transformation stage from administered price mechanism to market-determined price mechanism. During this period of transition, the government also cleared the oil pool deficit by completely abolishing it and transferring the deficit and to the general budget. The government has repaid most of the oil companies' outstanding through the payment of oil bonds. It also reduced the subsidies on petro-products.
With the dismantling of APM from April 2002, oil companies stand exposed to the vagaries in the international prices of crude oil and products. Hence, their profitability is now governed by different set of factors. Post-APM dismantling, import of oil, mainly from the Gulf countries, has become a serious threat to domestic players.
Currently, the refinery gate prices of petroleum products are computed based on the Import Parity Principle. In the computation of import parity prices, the principal elements are the FOB price, customs duties, ocean freight and a few other associated items. These elements, except for the FOB price, are not relevant in computing export parity prices.
So how does India differ from the rest of developing Asia?
Up to this point, the story of India’s petroleum product pricing appears a typical reflection of fuel subsidies throughout developing Asia and many other countries. Governments force public sector companies to indirectly subsidize consumption while simultaneously insolating the fiscal position of the government to the extent possible. However, conventional wisdom and economic theory show that consumption subsidies that keep commodity prices artificially low distort economic decision making. Subsidies result in higher consumption and distort the choice between fuel alternatives that might have positive social and economic externalities but are not subsidized. So how does India compare with its neighbors on petroleum product pricing?
Comparison of Retail Price in Selected Asian Countries

Source: Rangarajan Committee Report

Indian retail prices for petrol and diesel are surprisingly among the highest in South-Asia and other developing Asian regions, even exceeding prices of more developed economies. Still Indian companies are incurring huge under-recoveries on the sale of products due to the range of taxes and duties levied on the petroleum products. The complex and opaque system of taxes, charges, duties etc makes it difficult to arrive at a net position of the actual subsidies in the system.
International Comparison of Tax Proportion in Retail Price

Source: Rangarajan Committee Report

Thus, there is still need to review the pricing of sensitive petroleum products (petrol and diesel) to provide relief to consumers as well as corporate and also to rationalize pricing in the context of exports of the order of 20% of production of these products.