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 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 …
FINANCE minister Manmohan Singh contends non-conventional energy sources (NCES) have been given a boost through customs duty reductions of upto 20 per cent on a variety of items and continuation of the tax holiday for renewable energy projects. Funding for solar and wind energy programmes have been raised from 22.9 …
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 …
Sunlight can be used to treat cancer using a method developed by University of Tokyo researchers. Their method focusses sunlight on the cancer-affected areas using optical fibres. The photochemical reaction with a previously injected substance kills cancer cells. Cancer treatment methods, using lasers in photodynamic therapy, already exist, but the …
EVEN AS the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) goes ahead with Delhi's first mass residential colony based on solar passive architecture, architects continue to hold reservations about the project. Officials in the department of science and technology (DST), which is bearing half the project's research and development costs of Rs …
