Reply filed by the Director, Environment-cum-Special Secretary, Forest, Environment and Climate Change Department, Odisha and Member Secretary, Odisha Coastal Zone Management Authority, May 1, 2025. NGT, had registered suo motu in response to the news item in the Hindu, May 4, 2024 titled "Swell waves likely to strike coastal areas …
YET another step has been initiated to save the famous Taj Mabal in Agra from environmental degradation. This time, however, it will also benefit over 50,000 households in the city which will be pro- vided with liquified petroleum gas (LPG) connections' to ease the atmospheric pollution caused partly by their …
If the citizens of Mexico City -known to be one of the most polluted cities in the world -want to breathe cleaner air, they must first take care of their kitchens. For, Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist working with the University of California has come up with a startling report …
KEROSENE is the cooking flame in the kitchen for a large part of Delhi"s households. This most basic of liquid fuels has for years been provided by the government"s public distribution system (PDS), a classically corrupt and decentralised system, to people who usually turn a blind eye to the bent …
ONCE the parity in the prices of kerosene and high speed diesel oil (HSDO) ceased in 1978-79 and HSDO prices soared to nearly 3 times that of kerosene in 1992-93, there has been a sharp increase in the demand for kerosene in the blackmarket. While the household energy consumption grew …
Electric geysers, common in metropolises, are an exorbitant way to heat bathwater. Although most developed countries use piped gas or fuel oil to heat water, oil-poor developing obviously can't on any affordable scale. Cheaper alternatives for them are solar water heaters, piped natural gas, or gas from biomass combustion, of …
IN 1984, Brazil initiated a refrigerator-efficiency programme which included testing and labelling. Consequently, the average 1-door 250-litre model sold in 1986 used only 540 kwh that year. In 1989, the scale went down to a model that used only 336 kwh per year. The electricity consumption of refrigerators in Brazil's …
THE new range of energy-efficient compressors for refrigerators being developed by Shriram Refrigeration Industries is a godsend, considering the appallingly inefficient consumption of energy in the Indian domestic sector. However, the impact of these devices may be much less than desired. Energy saving devices such as compact fluorescent lamps (cfls), …
COOKING accounts for almost 50 per cent of the huge gulps of energy consumed in the domestic sector. To reduce the pressure on the fast-shrinking reserves of commercial fuels, the ministry for non-conventional energy sources (MNES) launched a subsidy scheme for solar cookers in 1982, making them available at a …
HALF THE total energy consumed in India is spent on cooking food, nearly twice the energy consumed by agriculture and industry put together. Energy planners, however, inexplicably and routinely overlook this vast consumption category, and planning priorities are invariably skewed against it. The report of a working group on energy …
Living conditions remain abysmally poor in India, with a big difference between urban and rural areas. Nearly three-quarters of urban households lived in pucca houses, compared to only about a quarter in rural areas. The difference between urban and rural households with an electricity connection is about the same. Again, …
A TIMES poll showed 92 per cent of British citizens opposed the two-stage imposition of a value-added tax on domestic fuel and heating. Unperturbed by these figures, British chancellor Kenneth Clarke said in a television interview, that they must go ahead to help bring down the L50 billion borrowing requirement. …
IN THE context of the forest department's increasing sensitivity to participatory programmes such as joint forest management, the "anti-people" stance of the article by a senior forester like A N Chaturvedi is shocking. In his article, he gives priority to specific uses of forests than to people and thus advocates …
IN KEEPING with the global trend, India is trying to popularise the use of alternative energy. One attempt aims at setting up urjagrams (non-conventional energy complexes) during the Eighth Plan. However, efforts over the past decade have failed for various reasons, including the wrong selection of villages, faulty implementation, non-involvement …
HOUSEHOLD electrical appliances may be convenient, but exposure to the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) they generate may not be safe. In fact, such EMFs and those generated by power transmission lines, radars and satellite equipment can even cause cancer, say scientists citing experimental results. But other scientists are not convinced and …
DESPITE China's much-vaunted economic development, more than half its population still depends on highly polluting fuels to meet domestic needs and several studies show that chronic respiratory diseases are on the increase because of exposure to the smoke from these fuels. In fact, chronic respiratory diseases are among the leading …
UK CHANCELLOR Kenneth Clarke blocked renewed moves to impose an energy tax at a meeting of European Community finance ministers in Luxembourg in June. Clarke maintained his predecessor had done enough to curb carbon emissions through the proposed imposition of VAT (value-added tax) on domestic fuel and the commitment to …
EVERY summer, power cuts torment residents of most Indian cities. However, a report submitted to the Union ministry for power by two non-resident Indian energy economists suggests that while technologies that would put a lesser load on the country's groaning power generation system are already available, animosity among organisations have …
It does not matter whether the assumptions made by the Tata Energy Research Institute are accurate or whether they will hold true. What matters is that TERI"s predictions of the country"s energy situation are grim -- and require urgent attention. If energy use in India is not rationalised and made …
IN TIBET, solar energy is being used increasingly to heat homes, cook food, run television sets, milk cows, shear sheep and, of course, provide light. Tibet gets 3,000 hours of sunshine each year, compared with New Delhi, which gets 2,525 hours annually. In an area slightly in excess of one …
The primary task of the Expert Group is to assist the High Power Committee who is to oversee the implementation of pollution control measures at Agra-Mathura Region, based on scientific and technical findings.
