Aligning with the transition at present underway in the international power sector, it appears infrastructure behemoths in the nation are also bringing about a alter in how they attain out to the basic public. The country’s biggest energy generator NTPC has lately tied up with iconic indigenous comics brand Amar Chitra Katha to publish a comic book titled Meet The Bijlees, ostensibly to educate college young children on genesis of electrical energy and the significance of power savings and other security requirements.
At the very same time, the comic book also illustrates how the business — earlier recognized as the National Thermal Power Corporation — is shifting its concentrate from operating fossil fuel primarily based energy plants to developing large capacities of renewable power.
While conversing with their schoolgoing young children Tanu and Manu, the parents — each linked with the energy market, the mother getting an NTPC employee — explains with no making use of really hard technical jargon how electrical energy is generated and transmitted from energy plants to the grids and ultimately to the households. In the approach, they also speak about security elements of electrical energy and power savings. Anecdotes of how NTPC requires care of the atmosphere whilst operating its energy plants and its plans to minimise emissions have been sporadically plugged in all through the story.
“To make these sources (non-renewable fossil fuels) last longer, NTPC has now started using renewable energy sources,” 1 of the parents inform their young children, implying that solar and wind plants are getting added not to replace coal, but only to complement standard energy sources. Without painting an unrealistic image of a ‘green future’, the father explains that obtaining only renewable-power primarily based plants “is not simple” and “renewable resources come with their own challenges of integration with the power grid”.
Currently, the total installed capacity of the energy behemoth stands at 62,910 mega-watt (MW), comprising 1,070 MW of renewable power-primarily based plants. By 2032, it plans to have a total energy production capacity of 1,30,000 MW and 30% of this would be non-thermal power primarily based. In an additional 12 years, NTPC desires to have a base of 32,000 MW renewables, 5,000 MW hydro and an additional 2,000 MW of nuclear energy plants.
“With this comic strip we at NTPC wish to raise awareness among children, who are the future of this country, about the complete process of electricity generation, from how it reaches the switch inside their house to light the lights,” a senior NTPC official told FE, adding that “we also have tried to raise awareness on the judicious consumption of electricity and the efforts being put to ensure a greener and cleaner environment.”
Unlike other modern elementary handbooks that intend to initiate young children on the complicated concern of electrical energy generation, transmission and distribution, the comic book at no point of time vilifies fossil fuel-primarily based energy systems. Keeping itself firmly gripped with the financial realities of India, the comic book narrative subtly insinuates that coal-primarily based energy will be the mainstay of electrical energy generation for the years to come, even though renewable energy sources have not been snubbed at anyplace in the text. Pretty prudently, the comic book has been prosperous in staying away from the clichéd ‘renewables vs thermal’ debate which inevitably tries to portray 1 to be improved than the other.
Comics have traditionally been a way to engage young children whilst breaking down complicated ideas into easy storylines. “At our end, we definitely saw a shift in terms of how brands wanted to talk to their customers about ten years ago,” Kuriakose Vaisian, editorial director at Amar Chitra Katha, mentioned. “There is a clear switch from traditional one-page advertisements to more story-telling, more gamification,” Vaisian remarked.