Paris Agreement’s Article 6

Context:

• COP29 adopts establishment of global carbon market under Paris Agreement’s Article 6

News:

• COP29 has officially adopted the new operational standards for a mechanism of the Paris Agreement under Article 6, setting the stage for a global carbon market.
• This adoption of Article 6.4, achieved during the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, sets the stage for operationalising Article 6, which has faced years of deadlock.

About Article 6:

• Article 6 of the Paris Agreement facilitates international collaboration to lower carbon emissions.
• It offers two pathways for countries and companies to trade carbon offsets, supporting the achievement of emission reduction targets set in their climate action plans, or nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
• The first option, known as Article 6.2, allows two countries to establish a bilateral carbon trading agreement under their own terms.
• The second, Article 6.4, seeks to develop a centralised, UN-managed system to enable both countries and companies to offset and trade carbon emissions.
• The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, tasked with creating a United Nations-governed carbon market, finalised essential standards covering carbon removal projects and methodology guidance.
• These include guidelines on the development and assessment of methodologies and requirements for carbon removal activities.
• While previously delayed by conflicting views over transparency and quality, the early adoption of these standards is intended to streamline carbon market operations.
• Negotiations had previously faltered due to divergent views on how permanent and reliable carbon credits should be.
• At COP28, disputes over forest credits and deforestation risks hindered progress, leading some stakeholders to worry that the expedited adoption at COP29 could set a precedent for sidestepping scrutiny.
• Environmental organisations expressed cautious optimism.
• The Art 6.4 decision is a helpful start to COP29.
• We need every financial mechanism we can get to solve the climate crisis.
• The adoption of standards under Article 6.4 moves the market closer to full operationalisation, helping overcome a procedural hurdle and enabling countries to address other critical issues at COP.
• Experts also emphasised the need for continuous improvement.
• The Article 6.4 mechanism is seen as an important tool in bridging the climate finance gap.
• Science shows that it is mathematically impossible to meet global climate goals without nature.
• The mechanism aims to enhance climate finance flows to countries with carbon-rich ecosystems, supporting both environmental integrity and equitable access to funding.
• Despite this achievement, significant elements under Article 6 remain unresolved, especially Article 6.2, which governs bilateral trades between countries.
• The EU and the U.S. remain divided over transparency requirements, and these talks will continue throughout COP29.
• For Article 6.4, additional standards on insurance policies, stress testing of the Reversal Risk Buffer Pool, and monitoring frameworks are still needed to ensure rigor and investor confidence.
• As negotiations advance, stakeholders urge continued commitment to a transparent, equitable, and functional global carbon market, stressing that the urgency of the climate crisis demands both ambitious action and robust oversight.

UPSC Mains PYQ (2014):

• Should the pursuit of carbon credit and clean development mechanism set up under UNFCCC be maintained even through there has been a massive slide in the value of carbon credit? Discuss with respect to India’s energy needs for economic growth.

Wind energy

What is Tamil Nadu’s wind power capacity? What about national wind energy capacity? What does repowering and refurbishing of wind turbines mean? Why are wind energy generators opposing the new policy of the Tamil Nadu government?

Introduction:

• Tamil Nadu, which is a pioneer in wind mill installations, has wind turbines that are over 30 years old.
• The Tamil Nadu government released the “Tamil Nadu Repowering, Refurbishment and Life Extension Policy for Wind Power Projects – 2024” in August this year.
• However, wind energy generators have opposed the policy, approached the Madras High Court and got a stay.
• They have demanded a policy that will “promote wind energy generation”.

Wind energy capacity and potential in India:

• The National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) says that India has wind power potential for 1,163.86 GW at 150 metres above ground level, and is ranked fourth in the world for installed wind energy capacity.
• At 120 metres above ground level, which is the normal height of wind turbines now, the potential is 695.51 GW, including the 68.75 GW from Tamil Nadu.
• Only about 6.5% of this wind potential is used at the national level and nearly 15% in Tamil Nadu.
• Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh are the leading States for installed wind energy capacity, collectively contributing 93.37% of the country’s wind power capacity installation.
• Tamil Nadu has seen the installation of wind turbines since the 1980s, and today it has the second largest installed wind energy capacity with 10,603.5 MW, according to data available with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
• Of the 20,000 wind turbines in the State, nearly 10,000 are of small capacities, that is less than one MW.

Wind turbines maintenance:

• Wind turbines that are more than 15 years old or have less than 2 MW capacity, can be completely replaced with new turbines, which is known as repowering.
• They can also be refurbished by increasing the height of the turbine, changing the blades, installing a higher capacity gear box, etc., to improve the energy generated.
• These can be done for standalone wind mills, or a group of wind mills owned by multiple generators.
• When wind energy generators take up safety measures in the old turbines and extend its life, its called life extension.
• The MNRE first came out with a “Policy for Repowering of the Wind Power Projects” in 2016 and based on consultations with stakeholders, released the “National Repowering & Life Extension Policy for Wind Power Projects -2023”.
• The NIWE estimates the repowering potential to be 25.4 GW if wind turbines of less than 2 MW capacity are taken into consideration.

Repowering and refurbishing:

• Wind energy generators say that when turbines were installed in the 1980s, potential wind sites were mapped and the mandatory gap required between two wind mills were determined based on the technology available then.
• All the turbines were in the sub one MW category.
• Over the years, the wind mill manufacturing sector has matured and technology has evolved.
• Habitations have come up between wind sites, posing new challenges, and wind energy evacuation and transmission infrastructure close to the wind sites needs to be strengthened to match the generation.
• Sources in the wind energy industry point out that a 2 MW wind turbine is usually 120 metres high and requires 3.5 acres of land.
• It can generate upto 65 lakh units of power.
• A 2.5 MW turbine, which is available in the market now, is 140 metres high and can generate 80 lakh units.
• It requires five acres.
• So, when an existing wind turbine is to be repowered by replacing it with a high capacity turbine, more land is required.
• Further, at Aralvaimozhi in Tamil Nadu, a high potential wind site, the 48 MW installed capacity now is made up of mostly 250 KW turbines and the potential at the site is for 100 MW.
• A project to have three sub-stations of 230 KVA each at ₹800 crore was sanctioned six years ago and is yet to take off for multiple reasons.
• In Tamil Nadu, wind mills installed after 2018 do not have banking facility.
• When a turbine is repowered, it will be treated as a new installation and the generator cannot bank the energy generated.
• This impacts the financial viability of the project.

Way forward:

• Among the wind energy generating States, the repowering potential is the highest in Tamil Nadu with over 7,000 MW of installed capacity that can be replaced or refurbished.
• If the small turbines are repowered or refurbished, the contribution of wind energy to total energy consumed during the peak windy seasons can go up easily by 25%.
• While there have been generators which have replaced turbines in the past without government support, the policy itself does not promote wind energy generation, claim the generators.
• It should look at challenges on the field and consider how the wind energy potential can be harnessed fully by the generators.
• No industry or energy generator will want to invest in a project that is not financially viable.
• The repowering policy is not commercially beneficial, said a person who has invested in wind energy.

UPSC Mains PYQ (2020):

• Describe the benefits of deriving electric energy from sunlight in contrast to the conventional energy generation. What are the initiatives offered by our Government for this purpose?

UPSC Mains PYQ (2018):

• With growing energy needs should India keep on expanding its nuclear energy programme? Discuss the facts and fears associated with nuclear energy.

Uranus

Context:

• Scientists uncover a magnetic misunderstanding about Uranus

About Uranus:

• In 1781, British astronomer William Herschel made Uranus the first planet discovered with the aid of a telescope.
• This frigid planet, our solar system’s third largest, remains a bit of an enigma 243 years later.
• And some of what we thought we knew about it turns out to be off the mark.
• Much of the knowledge about Uranus was gleaned when NASA’s robotic spacecraft Voyager 2 conducted a five-day flyby in 1986.
• But scientists have now discovered that the probe visited at a time of unusual conditions – an intense solar wind event – that led to misleading observations about Uranus, and specifically its magnetic field.
• The solar wind is a high-speed flow of charged particles emanating from the sun.
• The researchers took a fresh look at eight months of data from around the time of Voyager 2’s visit and found that it encountered Uranus just a few days after the solar wind had squashed its magnetosphere – the planet’s protective magnetic bubble – to about 20% of its usual volume.
• Astronomers found that the solar wind conditions present during the flyby only occur 4% of the time.
• The flyby occurred during the maximum peak solar wind intensity in that entire eight-month period.
• Astronomers told that they would have observed a much bigger magnetosphere if Voyager 2 had arrived a week earlier.
• Such a visit likely would have shown that the Uranus magnetosphere is similar to those of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, the solar system’s other giant planets, the researchers said.
• A magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding a planet where the planet’s magnetic field dominates, creating a protective zone against solar and cosmic particle radiation.
• The Voyager 2 observations left a misimpression about the magnetosphere of Uranus as lacking in plasma and possessing uncommonly intense belts of highly energetic electrons.
• Plasma – the fourth state of matter after solids, liquids and gases – is a gas whose atoms have been split into high-energy subatomic particles.
• Plasma is a common feature in the magnetosphere of other planets so its low concentration observed around Uranus was puzzling.
• The plasma environment of any planetary magnetosphere is usually formed of plasma from the solar wind, plasma from any moons present inside the magnetosphere and plasma from the atmosphere of the planet.
• At Uranus, researchers did not see plasma from the solar wind or from the moons.
• And the plasma that was measured was very tenuous.
• Uranus, blue-green in color due to the methane contained in an atmosphere comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium, has a diameter of about 50,700 km.
• It is big enough to fit 63 Earths inside it.
• Among the solar system’s eight planets, only Jupiter and Saturn are larger.
• Its unusual tilt makes Uranus appear to orbit the sun like a rolling ball.
• Uranus, which orbits almost 20 times further from the sun than Earth does, has 28 known moons and two sets of rings.
• The Voyager 2 observations had suggested that its two largest moons – Titania and Oberon – often orbit outside the magnetosphere.
• The new study indicates they tend to stay inside the protective bubble, making it easier for scientists to magnetically detect potential subsurface oceans.
• Both are thought to be prime candidates for hosting liquid water oceans in the Uranian system due to their large size relative to the other major moons.
• Scientists are eager to learn whether subsurface oceans on moons in the outer solar system have conditions suitable to support life.
• NASA on Oct. 14 launched a spacecraft on a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa to address that very question.
• A future mission to Uranus is crucial to understanding not only the planet and magnetosphere, but also its atmosphere, rings and moons.