Green energy is threatening Tamil Nadu’s greenest district – the Nilgiris.
This irony brings into focus the paradoxes of Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian growth model: even as it ensures that the state has enviable development indicators, the sustainable energy projects that fuel it heighten the economic and ecological vulnerabilities of some regions.
This anxiety is evident in the concerns about two hydro-electricity projects in Kundah taluka in the Nilgiris.
In May, an expert appraisal committee of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change granted permission for an environmental impact assessment to be conducted for a 1,000-megawatt hydropower dam in the Upper Bhavani region of the south Nilgiris. This step means that the project is in a preconstruction and clearances stage.
Though this project will use a pumped storage system that is considered environmentally friendly, experts and activists have serious reservations about the dam on the Bhavani river.
The project envisages a tunnel being constructed within 2 km of the Mukurthi National Park. Mukurthi’s shola-grassland ecosystem is habitat to more than 200 Nilgiri tahrs, Tamil Nadu’s state animal, and to the endemic Nilgiri Laughing Thrush.
The Upper Bhavani dam is not the only contentious project in The Nilgiris. In April, the Sillahalla Pumped Storage Hydro-Electric Project in Kundah taluka was put on hold.
Groups from the Badaga community that live in the area have organised protests against the project in recent months, fearing that farmland in 11 villages will be submerged. The environmental assessment report for the project states that 56.4% of the submergence area is agricultural.
On March 29, the gram sabhas of two villages passed resolutions against the project.
Officials said that the Sillahalla project had been suspended because the mandatory No Objection Certificates from the environment ministry and the Forest Department had not been obtained, and that the views of environmentalists and the public must be considered.
But the government has not said that it is terminating the project, which is estimated to cost more than Rs 5,000 crore.
The pumped storage hydropower system that these two projects will use requires a lower and upper dam reservoir, connected by a tunnel. During lean periods, operators use solar or wind energy to pump water from the lower to higher reservoir. When demand rises, water flows down through a turbine, generating electricity. This closed-loop water recycling and use of renewable solar and wind energy makes the pumped storage system a model of green technology.
Experts point out that the Nilgiris already has 12 dams, and the Kundah taluka is a hydro-electric complex with 10 dams. The Nilgiris are a hyper-engineered hydro-scape.
The new projects fail to consider the possible impact of climate change on the region, even though scientists predict that the frequency of extreme rainfall events will increase in the Nilgiris. Why dam an over-dammed district in the climate era?
These projects are being constructed against the backdrop of a larger progressive backdrop – the political economy of the Dravidian model of development and its energy needs.
This modern governance framework draws from the rationalist, reformist and justice imperatives of the Dravidian movement, which emerged around 1916 as a social reform and self respect movement against caste inequality. The Dravidian model of development draws from these rationalist, reformist and justice imperatives.
Combining inclusive economic growth and human development, Tamil Nadu’s development indicators are comparable to Asian economies such as Vietnam. Since 2021-’22, Tamil Nadu has grown at more than 8% every year.
This equitable development model is based on investments in health and education and driven by services such as information technology and manufacturing sectors such as automobiles and textiles. But it is energy-intensive. To power its growth in a sustainable fashion, the state is counting on green energy. The creation of the Tamil Nadu Green Energy Corporation Limited in 2024 signals this purpose.
But as the residents of Kundah taluka have noted, the price of sustainable development will be paid by their region.
The political economy of green energy
Conventional and pumped storage hydropower dams are green because they use water, a renewable source, to generate electricity and their operations do not emit carbon.
Studies predict that India will generate more hydropower in the coming years even without building new capacity. This is because, with climate change, rainfall is expected to increase and dams will have greater inflows. But enhanced inflows are likely to make dams more vulnerable to overflows and bursts. Extreme rain events can cause dams to collapse from seepage and leaks or even forced dam releases.
Preventing these problems will mean upgrading infrastructure – which will heighten the risk of landslides.
In January 2024, the state released a document titled “Tamil Nadu Vision $1 Trillion”, charting out its ambition to grow its economy to that value, up from $329 billion dollars now. Modern, sustainable infrastructure is a key component to achieve this goal by 2030.
Tamil Nadu’s energy policy, announced in 2024, says that the state aspires to be the national leader in clean energy and generate 100 billion units of renewable energy by 2030.
Installed energy capacity, and an improved green energy mix of solar and wind energy, are a crucial infrastructure tenet, the policy states. It adds that the government will aggressively pursue renewable sources of energy and promote hydro and pumped storage projects.
The state has maintained an 8% growth rate since 2021-’22, outpacing the national average of 7.76% for the period.
A textile, automobile and software export powerhouse, Tamil Nadu’s GDP is second to Maharashtra. But unlike Maharashtra, whose growth is driven largely by enterprises centred around Mumbai, Tamil Nadu’s growth is more dispersed. Districts such as Madurai, Coimbatore, Tirupur and Salem contribute as well.
The government’s energy talk is earnest. In the Nilgiris, it proposes two more pumped storage projects – besides Sillahalla and Upper Bhavani – the Sandy Nalla and Sigur projects, both a public-private partnership like the Sillahalla project.
The perils
However, Tamil Nadu must be cautious in its aggressive pursuit of renewable energy. Pumped storage projects share risks with conventional dams and have unique challenges. Landslides due to slope excavation and flooding due to sudden release or dam failures must be considered.
Unique risks emerge from the dual reservoir design and related infrastructure such as tunnels. Water fluctuations from frequent water cycling between reservoirs causes seepage in soil and rock. This poses risks in porous terrains like the upper Nilgiris. These filling and draining cycles could destabilise slopes.
Chief Minister MK Stalin’s government is thinking hard about how to make the Dravidian model sustainable. But a just transition to a low carbon economy has trade-offs: sustainable energy for mainland Tamil Nadu and environmental susceptibility for its mountains.
Climate change burdens marginalised classes and castes, and benefits the privileged. The wealthiest 10% of the world are responsible for two-thirds of global warming through direct emissions from their consumption and also emissions of industries they have invested in. Poorer tropical countries, and marginalised sections within them, suffer from floods, droughts and heat waves that emissions cause.
Tamil Nadu’s industrialisation aspirations are legitimate and its renewable energy policies are laudable. But for a hyper-dammed region like the Nilgiris, grassroots and gram sabha consultations, and stakeholder consultations are environmentally just.
The environmental and economic concerns of Nilgiris citizens are appeals to the ideas of equity that underpin the Dravidian movement.
They ask the state to adopt scientific temper in assessing the geological, hydrological, ecological and economic risks of damming an over-dammed geography. They seek environmental justice from the state – participation in the policy process and a recognition that like climate change, its mitigation too produces disparate impacts.
When Tamil Nadu enshrines environmental justice into its Dravidian development model, it will be worthy of emulation not just by other Indian states but even upper and middle-income nations.
Siddhartha Krishnan is an environmental sociologist and historian with ATREE, Bengaluru. Views are personal.
June 5 is World Environment Day.
