The Punjab Energy Development Agency has released a draft green hydrogen policy aiming to achieve a green hydrogen and ammonia production capacity of 100 kilo tonnes per annum by 2030. The policy proposes extending incentives under the existing “Punjab Industrial and Business Development Policy 2022” to new green hydrogen and …
IN RURAL areas, the use of collected biomass continues to burgeon because the availability of alternate sources of energy has increased more tardily than expected. The poorest of the rural poor are far more dependent on non-commercial sources of energy like wood, dung, and agricultural wastes than the urban poor. …
INDIAN scientists, in collaboration with Dutch researchers, have developed the technology to convert agricultural residues -- like rice husk and groundnut shell -- into briquettes for use as an efficient, economical and a non-polluting fuel. The screw press technology for briquetting biomass compacts low-density agricultural residues into cylinders with a …
A recent study conducted by scientists from the Regional Engineering College (REC), Kurukshetra, reveals that all energy needs of a village can be met locally from the available biomass, using fluidised bed technology -- an industrial technique for efficient combustion. The technology involves suspending the material to be burnt by …
PLANTS support human life. Period. Today, a majority of people in the developing countries depend on fuelwood, dung, charcoal and agro-wastes for their cooking, heating and other energy requirements. A flicker of electricity is also produced from agricultural and other wastes. Subsequent to the oil shock in the '70s, and …
Renewable energy sources and technologies have been researched and promoted in varying degrees in different countries over the past 2 decades. Do energy experts have a clearer idea now as to which renewable sources and technologies should play a greater role in meeting rural energy needs? I don't think that …
FAR from the shrill cut-and-splice medley of liberalisation, reform and the free market highway to economic growth, some experts have been advocating an alternative approach to alleviating poverty and dealing with energy scarcity in India. They banded together in Bangalore recently to suggest a bioresources strategy for India. Bioresources, essentially …
The international conference, BioResources "94, held in Bangalore from October 3-7, aimed to forge a new strategy to use biomass resources for sustainable development. However, at the end of the conference -- organised by the International Energy Initiative, the Biomass Users Network, the Commonwealth Science Council, and the Stockholm Environment …
Does rural fuelwood use and more generally rural biomass use cause forest degradation? This question has been debated in scientific and policy circles. The author presents a framework for defining degradation and sustainable use of forests that might help clarify some of the confusion.
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, …
IT ALL began in the early 1980s, when the village of Seed near Udaipur in Rajasthan registered itself under the Rajasthan Gamdhan Act of 1971 that gave the gram sabha full control over all the land within the village boundary, including erstwhile government land. The sabha, consisting of all adults …
Socialist economist Ignacy Sachs of the Centre de Recherches Sur le Bresil Contemporain ***(translation) in Paris has severely criticised current Indian development policies. Addressing scientists at the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) in Delhi on November 25, he said, "The present policies seek to cater to …
MAHATMA Gandhi dreamt of an India where villages would be independent entities, supporting themselves by harmonising human needs with local resources. Today, driven by the bogey of over-exploitation and the steady depletion of natural resources, researchers are frantically trying to find ways to realise the Mahatma's vision by making the …
Sugar mills need to invest only an additional Rs 2.3 crore to generate 1 MW of power, whereas conventional power generation from coal costs Rs 3 crore per MW, reports a task force constituted by the ministry of non-conventional energy sources (MNES). The study has found that India's 400 sugar …
"What are we supposed to feel when a sarkari animal carries our children away? Are we still supposed to love the animal and the sarkar?" This plea by an activist working with poor people living in and around sanctuaries and national parks was countered by a conservationist who argued: "But …
• A RS 4.5-crore, 100-kw solar photovoltaic power plant -- Asia's largest -- is to be commissioned by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in May 1993 at Kalyanpur village in Aligarh district. • A Rs 4,000-crore, 100-mw tidal wave power project in the Gulf of Kutch is being reviewed. …
With the resource crunch persisting, won't you find it difficult to raise funds for the revised target of 2,000 mw for power generation from non-conventional energy in the Eighth Plan ? Funds will be mobilised through private sector investments, loans from financial institutions and assistance from international agencies in addition …
Mini-micro hydel: Indian technologists developed mini-hydel systems more than 100 years ago, but in the post-Independence emphasis on the new "temples of modern India" -- huge dams and power stations -- mini-micro hydel systems were neglected. In 1989, however, hydro projects below 3 mw were transferred from the power ministry …
TWENTY years ago, the people of the remote Garhwal village of Mandal decided to resist commercial felling of the trees on which they depended for their basic needs. Their resistance soon spread to other parts of Garhwal and Kumaon, where local pressures on the area's limited grazing resources had reduced …
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 …
Nearly 50% of terrigenous materials delivered to the world's oceans are delivered through just twenty-one major river systems. These river-dominated coastal margins (including estuarine and shelf ecosystems) are thus important both to the regional enhancement of productivity and to the global flux of C that is observed in land-margin ecosystems. …
