A 2,000 MW Battery That Costs 2,500 MW: Why an Expert Panel Told the Centre to Drop the Sharavathi Project

Article summary

The Union Government told the Karnataka High Court on 10 July 2026 that a three-member expert committee constituted by the National Board for Wildlife and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has recommended against the proposed 2,000 MW Sharavathi Pumped Storage Project, and advised against granting it statutory clearances. The roughly ₹10,000-crore project, promoted by the Karnataka Power Corporation, would require about 142.76 hectares of land — approximately 102 hectares inside the Sharavathi Valley Lion-Tailed Macaque Wildlife Sanctuary and about 39.72 hectares in its eco-sensitive zone — across Shivamogga and Uttara Kannada districts in the Western Ghats. The committee's most striking finding was arithmetical: the plant would draw roughly 2,500 MW to pump water uphill in order to return about 2,000 MW at peak demand, a net energy loss inherent to pumped storage, which the panel weighed against irreversible loss of evergreen forest in a sanctuary holding roughly 700 lion-tailed macaques. The Karnataka High Court had already stayed work in the forest area in March 2026 on a public interest litigation. For UPSC, this is a rare, fully documented instance of the renewable-energy-versus-biodiversity trade-off being adjudicated on the record.