Jaitapur Repeating Enron Once Again

People's Democracy ( Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Vol. XXXV No. 02 Janua ry 09, 2011 Jaitapur: Repeating Enron Once Again Prabir Purkayastha ANY TIME an expensive power project agreement is pushed on to the country, the argument is put forward that as we are short of energy; we should welcome power from any source. This was what was done during the ruinous Enron project and what is being pushed now for the Jaitapur project. The victim in both cases are the people of Maharashtra, who earlier paid for expensive power from Enron and who will have to pay again a very high cost for power from the proposed Jaitapur plant. UTTER LACK OF TRANSPARENCY People might remember that when Enron plant was being touted as a major achievement, it was supposed to produce electricity at a cost of Rs 2.40 per unit. When it finally came online, the cost was found to be Rs 5-6, virtually sinking the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) which had signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Enron for 90 per cent offtake. Not unsurprisingly, the run-up to Jaitapur is very similar. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) is producing some figures of the cost of electricity without disclosing the cost of the plant itself: we are expected to accept on good faith that the cost of e lectricity from Jaitapur will be comparable to the coal-fired plants because the NPCIL is saying so. The problem that the NPCIL does not yet seem to have realised is that under the current Electricity Act, they can no longer thrust on the grid, whatever cost they may decide privately between themselves and Areva, the supplier of the reactors. These figures have to be cleared by the regulatory agencies --- either by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) or by the Maharashtra Central Electricity Regulatory Commissio n (MERC) --- and ca n be a ccepted only if the cost of electricity is competitive. But, given the figures for Areva costs, there is no way Jaitapur plant can produce electricity at costs that are comparable to other sources of producing electricity.

Jaitapur Repeating Enron Once Again

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