Beschreibung:
Recognizing the links between electricity development, and the environment, the Bank, in cooperation with the Government of India and the State governments of Karnataka and Rajasthan, implemented assessments of environmental policies in the Power Sector in the Indian states of Karnataka and Rajasthan. This work for the State of Rajasthan is designed to examine, and quantify a broad number of options for reducing the environmental impacts of power development in general, and power reform in particular. The strategic objective is to provide the analytical basis for assisting these states develop power sector policies, and strategies that are environmentally sustainable. The study begins by evaluating the impacts of the baseline reform scenario, and then perturbs this scenario for the options examined, including a scenario of "stalled reform," to enable assessment of the costs, and benefits of reform. Because Rajasthan has already implemented significant reform measures, "no reform" (as used in the original 1998 EIPS study) is not a useful scenario. The major findings of this study may be summarized as follows: 1) Power sector reform is the single most important step that may be taken to mitigate the environmental impacts of the power sector. The difference in emissions (and damage costs) between reform, and stalled reform far exceeds the difference across all other options, such as DSM, or the use of renewables. 2) The further addition of environmental benefits yields the social net benefit. The only (significant) winners of stalled reform are the pilferers, who would benefit from the failure to further reduce non-technical losses. Unless the reforms progress to completion, all other stakeholders, including the environment, would lose