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 …
THE once-forgotten architectural concepts that manipulate the sun's energy to create a conducive environment within a building are being revived the world over. A recent study by the International Energy Agency, a worldwide consortium of government energy departments and industry, investigated 48 commercial buildings in Western Europe and Canada built …
What are the recommendations from the study, Energy for Tomorrow's World, that are relevant to India? Energy for Tomorrow's World is a global study, where no particular country has been specified. But 1 of the 9 regional working groups was on South Asia, and the people involved talked confidently about …
Not a single proposal has been cleared by the Indian Renewable Energy Development Authority (IREDA), the financing arm of the Union ministry of non-conventional energy (MNES), in the 2 years since the pompous launch of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF)-World Bank (WB) funded market development programme for photovoltaic (PV) systems …
WITH charges of skewing up national priorities and rendering them fanciful, the first ever Global Environmental Facility (GEF)-World Bank (WB)-assisted programme on developing the market for solar photovoltaic (SPV) systems has fallen flat on its face. After 2 years of the launch of the US $195 million renewable energy programme, …
PLANTS have been doing it for millions of years now, but it is only now that scientists are tasting success in trapping the sun"s energy in chemicals and then using it to produce fuels. Plants and some bacteria harness solar energy through photosynthesis. But scientists trying to tap almost unlimited …
THE much-touted market development programme for solar photovoltaic (SPV) devices, of the Union ministry of non-conventional energy sources (MNES), has blown a fuse, ministry officials admitted at a workshop held in New Delhi recently. The programme envisaged the production of a range of SPV devices for the urban sector. As …
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 …
FOR ONCE, Indians can look forward to the sun doing the out-of-character job of cooling them. A new device -- a "suncap fan" that brings visions of a whirligig attached to a dunce"s cap -- that might soon hit the country"s overheated cricket stands will be powered by solar photovoltaic …
FOR THOUSANDS of years, humans have strived to utilise the sun's energy. Through the ages, the potential of solar energy has been exploited with increasing effectiveness in numerous applications, from small installations to the gigantic solar power stations. Solar energy was perhaps conceived as necessary for survival and as an …
EVER SINCE the Earth Summit last year in Rio de Janeiro, there has been a spate of literature on sustainable development. Suddenly there is money aplenty for seminars, conferences and publications on every aspect of the subject. Suddenly corporations, multilateral agencies and even governments are anxious to fund research or …
IN A CONTROVERSIAL move, the Union ministry of nonconventional energy sources (MNES), has decided to establish a Rs 382 crore, 35 MW solar thermal power plant near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, even though earlier solar thermal units in the country have been beset with problems and found to be prohibitively expensive. …
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 …
To boost the stagnant demand for solar heating devices, the Union ministry of nonconventional energy sources (MNES), along with the ministry for urban development, has chalked out a scheme to make the installation of solar and air heaters mandatory for all government buildings. This was announced in the beginning of …
NEVER take an expert's word as gospel -- that's what a team of Australian schoolboys would tell you. Despite experts warning them their project wouldn't work, the schoolboys have successfully built a solar-powered catamaran that is "50 per cent more efficient than any comparable vessel". Students from Prince Alfred College …
MANY OF the nation's premier scientific establishments have utilised government funding poorly and failed to meet their 1991-92 objectives, complains the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The CAG report, placed before Parliament on May 7, made its complaint on the basis of an audit of the working …
• Although the ministry of non-conventional energy sources spent Rs 69 crore -- 62 per cent of its expenditure on solar energy programmes -- on installing solar photovoltaic devices during 1986-92, evaluation studies indicate most of the units are not functioning because of "lack of proper maintenance, poor performance of …
HEAT ALWAYS flows from a hotter body to a cooler one, according to the second law of thermodynamics. But then why is the Sun's atmosphere hotter, by several million degrees, than its surface where all the energy is generated? Astrophysicist Jack Scudder has furnished an ingenious mechanism to explain how …
A solar still, developed at the Centre for Energy Studies (CES) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi to make waste and saline water potable, has sparked a controversy concerning its inventor. According to a report in the British journal, New Scientist, the solar still's improved version was …
A pilot project to install energy-efficient, solar lanterns as an employment generation scheme in the northeastern states is to be implemented soon by the Department of Non-conventional Energy Sources (DNES), the Department of Science and Technology and the North-eastern Council. If the programme succeeds, installation will be expanded to a …
STAR Plus, the satellite channel well-known for its steamy soaps and street-wise sleuths, is going green -- and with a vengeance. It showed a two-part series in mid-March called After The Warming and has scheduled, among other programmes for this slot, Race to Save the Planet, -- a ten-part series …
