The problem with solar energy

The more I look closely at things, the murkier they seem to be. Take solar power, for instance, now much touted as the energy source of the future. The Indian Government itself has set a target, under the National Solar Energy Mission, of 20,000 megawatts (for Heaven’s sake!).
Solar energy is clean, no doubt. The problem is in the manufacture of solar cells.

Currently, much of the production comes from a process in which a chemical called cadmium telluride is used, a highly toxic compound known to be a carcinogen and now being actively chastised by many groups working on toxics. Since the life of a solar cell is about two decades (practically speaking), just where are the cells going to go, once their life is done? There is no recycling plant that I know of, in India at least, and the manufacturers of solar panels aren’t exactly lining up to receive toxic waste.

Nanosolar, a Silicon Valley ‘clean technology’ start up says it has the answer to cadmium telluride, an answer it calls CIGS. This is a combination of copper, indium, gallium and selenium, which will be less toxic and perhaps cheaper, if produced on a large scale. The issue here will be just how these metals will be extracted. Copper mines, for example, have an absymal record of toxic waste in spillage, from India to Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Mexico and parts of Africa, including Zambia, where copper virtually supports the export economy and Congo. If anything can be said in its favour, it is that copper mines have been impartial in their record of destruction. Indium is a rare metal & its extraction promises to be messy as well.

For the moment, however, we must take away two messages : the first that the cheapest form of solar power is solar thermal power, which involves heating water with sunlight to make steam, using good ol’ lenses. The second that, the only sustainable solution for all of us is to reduce our consumption of resources.
Many intelligent, educated people believe that our species will innovate its way out of this energy and climate change crisis, because we have worked ourselves out of crises, such as the food shortages of the ‘60s that led to the Green Revolution. This is silly optimism, backed by no data to support it.
There is no ‘clean’, unlimited party on this planet. Reduction, I believe, is the immediate answer.

Kumaran

When I first saw Kumaran, I must have been four or five years old and I immediately took a liking to him, a fondness that lasted many years. The reason was simple: he would shower me with chocolates and toffees, despite (unnecessary) protestations from my parents. 

He used to visit us once a month on a weekend and it was a regularity that I particularly appreciated. The procedure would be the same every month: he would stand hesitantly, just outside our large two-storeyed home, Bungalow 75, in Digboi and clear his throat with a low cough. The servants, who had seen him walk up the driveway, would let my parents know of course and my father would come down, with a resigned air, me behind him in eager anticipation. He would hand over the goodies to me with a warm smile and a somewhat pedestrian conversation with Dad in Malayalam would ensue, about the journey from Duliajan, which was an hour away from our home. 

Dad would ask the mandatory questions: how’s the family, is the job going well, any changes in the organisation, while Kumaran enquired about my brothers, then studying in Rishi Valley.  He always spoke with hesitation and deference; I never actually saw Kumaran sit down, certainly not inside a room, for he saw himself as many levels below us in a hierarchy of native definition. They would talk in that lovely sit-out outside the living room, with its views of roses and dahlias and the beautiful old tree at the edge of the large garden.  

There was a story, of course, a history of kindness and return.  Many years before I was born, my father, whose generous nature found particular inspiration in helping his brethren from Kerala, had secured a permanent low-end job for Kumaran at the Duliajan oil refinery, supported him financially in the early days and played a role in his promotion to supervisor (nepotism wasn't invented then). 

Most people - well, almost everyone really - would have expressed their gratitude at these moments, brought a box of sweets for the benefactor and then forgotten all about it. Kumaran was different. His monthly visit had just a single message: thank you, he would say, often with eyes moist, a gentle smile and that hint of apology that I could never really understand. The somewhat forced conversation - and a cup of tea - over, Kumaran would leave with a promise to return a month later, while my father entreated him to not trouble himself – a trip to Digboi took the better part of a day for the man. 

A month would pass and there he would be again. With my chocolates. 

Then he stopped coming home and, of course, I asked Dad what had happened. He’s got a job in the Gulf, he said, a place far away which, in the early 1970s, it certainly was. I recall him telling Mum that Kumaran would now make a good deal of money. “He will never forget us,” Mum said in her dramatic way and she was right, of course. 

Kumaran would write regular letters to Dad - he spoke of his family back in Kerala, enquired about everyone and asserted that he was saving money well.  It was indeed apparent at some point that he was making more money than Dad did in his last job before retirement as a Chief Internal Auditor but the tone of the letters - the deference and gratitude - never changed. 

When we moved to Bangalore in 1977, Kumaran began visiting us while on his annual holiday, taking a train up from his home town in Kerala. Some things were now different: the chocolates were imported ones, and he brought my parents small gifts - an after-shave, a perfume, a can opener - with a reiteration in the ensuing conversation: it’s because of both of you that I am what I am. Years later, he retired and returned home to Kerala. 

When he came to see Mum after Dad’s demise, he was inconsolable and I saw him some years later at our place again, that low cough, gentle smile, now on a wrinkled countenance. As he hugged me, I found it hard to relate to him, for memories - and the emotions that they kindle - aren't fungible, often they aren't even real and kindness and its payback are within.  I had never seen his family or known him and the connection - kids and teens have a long rope of Excuse  - was primarily through the goodie bag. He sat down this time in the living room and I shortly excused myself. It was the last time I saw him. 

Kumaran was, in the 1950s, just another young man from Kerala, escaping poverty by moving to a strange land called Assam.  A kind man from his home land lent him a hand and it was a clasp that never released.  Oscar Wilde once said: if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you, but that is the principal difference between dog and man. Kumaran, that unassuming man, now a part of forgotten oral history, proved Oscar Wilde wrong, at least for a child who was watching.  And learning.....  

What made Kumaran different?  It is a question I will never know the answer to.