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Alternative energy needs a renewed push

The Budget needs to promote renewable for ensuring energy security, fighting climate change & advancing business interests: India generates 13,878.58 MW grid-interactive powers from renewable sources like from wind, small hydro, solar, biogas co-generation and biomass. It amounts to 9% of the total installed generation capacity. It has been enabled by the provision of government incentives like capital and interest subsidy, accelerated depreciation and concessional excise and customs duties. Some states also offer preferential tariff for grid interactive renewable power. Last year, the sector attracted investment of $3.7 billion, growing 12% over 2007. The biggest chunk went to the wind industry, which grew 17% to $2.6 billion. The investment in solar industry went up to $347 million. Small hydro investment quadrupled to $543 million. Bio-fuels recorded a fall of 80% to $49 million. Mergers and acquisitions amounted to $585 million in 2008, according to UNEP’s Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2009. Renewable energy could have done even better, but for policy, financial and technical bottlenecks. A recent study by London-based Commonwealth Business Council and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ahmedabad blames issues like grid interface issues in the wind industry, lack of sufficient land for solar power installation, unstructured nature of the biomass market, and lack of data about the waste sector. Besides, low R&D spends and lack of baseline data are also deterring investors. India is already seized of the issue. For example, the 11th Five Year Plan, ending 2012, has set a target of 14,000 MW of grid interactive and distributed/ decentralized renewable power generation installed capacity, including 10,500 MW of wind energy. Similarly, the National Action Plan on Climate Change underlines that the central and the state electricity regulatory commissions must encourage the renewable industry by purchasing a stipulated percentage of grid-based power from it. The plan also aims to promote solar energy and make it competitive with energy sourced from fossil fuels. The plan has set goals of increasing production of PV to 1,000 MW/year; and commissioning more than 1,000 MW of solar thermal power generation. But India needs to do more because of the big potential of renewables. The country needs to address not only issues like high capital investment, low capacity utilization and grid synchronization bottlenecks, but also institutional financing, private investment and technology transfer. It’s important because India can meet 35% of the electricity needs from renewables, according to Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable India Energy Outlook by Greenpeace. It’s not only important for India’s energy security, but also for lowering emissions. Though India’s per capita emission is only 1.8 tonnes against 20 tonnes of the US, India is the third biggest emitter in absolute terms and is facing international pressure to commit to emission targets. Renewable could help diffuse the pressure. Lastly, promoting renewables is a business imperative because it’s big business worldwide. The global renewable energy market is doubling every three years. It’s time for India to connect with it. The Union Budget could be an apt opportunity to do so....
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Monday,20 July, 2009 | Hits: 100

Cleaning up climate change

The passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (Acesa) in the US House of Representatives on Saturday has been hailed by US President Barack Obama as a “historic” step. But even before the legislation becomes law, daggers have been drawn. ...
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Sunday,28 June, 2009 | Hits: 72

Who will research the researchers?

An in the US and UK, India has centers of scientific research excellence. The problem here is that funding is not linked to quality evaluation. Grants must be performance –based: One of the markers of how serious a country is about a ‘knowledge economy’ is how much it invests in basic science research. More often than not, such research is not accompanied by directly translateable outcomes, such as a pill, or a superbug that clears up the oil spill. A popular example of such research is the discovery of DNA, which would not have happened, had Franklin, Watson, Crick and Wilkins been asked to produce a pill at the end of their research. Basic science research is crucial for human development, across barriers of nations and time. Development of technology is vital, and technology is the human end of science. And one can not really exist without the other; without solid bedrock of science, new technologies dwindle —and in absence of new technologies, scientific research stagnates. It is at this interesting junction of science and technology that India finds itself. The well-known success of the IITs has led to the setting up of several more of those, but basic science in India flourishes only in select few centres, and in select few subjects. Given the interdependence of science and technology, this asymmetry does not bode well for the long term. The recent initiative to replicate the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) model by setting up multiple similar institutes (Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, IISER) across the country is a step in the right direction. This approach has been successful in the UK and the US, where Research Councils and National Institutes of Health have set up units dedicated to research on specific topics, across the country. The success of such an initiative relies on a regular external review by a college of experts, failing which the unit is either shut down or its funding reduced drastically. Such a carrot-and-stick approach ensures a system of checks and balances in maintaining high research productivity (indexed by publications and patents, among others). So, one key element for the success of these centres is to constitute an unbiased panel of experts, drawn ideally from both India and abroad—to ensure as objective a review process as possible. This exemplifies the ‘top-down’ approach in tackling the problem. On its own, this approach is fated to meet with problems in both student as well as faculty recruitment. It is not until university courses have been updated in line with established standards in research-intensive universities in more developed countries, that we can expect such centres of excellence to sustain over a long period. In order to attract the best and the brightest students, there is a need for more schemes such as the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana run by IISc, and the Summer Fellowships offerred by the Indian Academy of Sciences. Such programmes allow students to spend a sizeable period of time at a national research laboratory, get research experience at an early stage, and assess basic science as a viable career option. At a time when popular culture poses engineering and medicine as the most desirable career choices, a wider availability and publicity of such programmes is bound to improve the quality of students coming into research. Also, a system of increasing performance-dependent grants should be coupled with regular researcher exchange programmes such as the CSIR-Royal Society International Joint Project Schemes. As long as there is a system of checks built into such positions that entail a minimum number of months per year to be spent working in India, this could provide a framework for deriving the maximum benefit from researchers who would otherwise not consider India a research destination. Some EU universities have successfully adopted this model, which allows a researcher to freely move across borders —while helping create multiple groups of next generation researchers and raising the research profile of all the universities they are part of. This is the bottom-up component of the research capacity development process. Most of this, unfortunately, will not lead to immediate results that can be observed within the five-year tenure of one government; and hence needs a strong political will to implement. However, these are essential steps in nation-building, a legacy left to us by Nehru —when he envisioned the future of the IITs and Jamsedji Tata when he set up the IISc. It is this vision that we hope the current political ruling class shall carry forward. —The author is a lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Reading, and the Charles and Katharine Darwin Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK...
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Sunday,28 June, 2009 | Hits: 83

Green tribunal to deal with environmental violations

The authority will have technical experts on it: To deal with thousands of environmental cases in various courts all over the country in an orderly fashion, the Centre has proposed to create a National Green Tribunal to adjudicate cases related to violation of the Environmental Protection Act.The quasi-judicial body will have judicial and technical members and hear disputes related to environmental abuse and violation of the Environmental Protection Act.Examples of Environmental Protection Act violation cases include destruction of the environment, polluting river and lake waters, cutting down forests and allowing illegal mining. A cabinet note on the formation of the National Green Tribunal is being discussed by various ministries, environment minister Jairam Ramesh said on Friday. It will go to Parliament after the Cabinet approval as a new law would be needed to set up a tribunal.On the lines of CATThe National Green Tribunal would function in the same line as the Central Administrative Tribunal and its decisions could be challenged only in the Supreme Court, said Jairam Ramesh.Only civil matters will come under the ambit of the NGT. The criminal cases, if there are any, will be tried in regular courts.However, environmental clearances given to various projects by the union ministry cannot be challenged in the NGT. For that, a separate body – national environment appellate authority – is already in place.Additional powersThe new tribunal will have more power and authority as compared to an existing tribunal which deals only with hazardous substances. The ministry is in the process of creating a new environment protection authority to strictly monitor violation of environmental laws. A national Ganga river basin authority with Rs1, 000 crore corpuses is also in the offing....
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Sunday,28 June, 2009 | Hits: 88

The long goodbye

Earlier this month, television in America underwent its biggest change in more than 60 years. The last of the big television stations still broadcasting in analogue turned off their transmitters and begin digital transmissions only. Half of the country’s 1,700 or so television stations that transmit their signals at full power have already ceased sending out analogue signals. But those were almost entirely in rural areas. For the majority of those Americans who get their television free over the air, this was a big switch-off. ...
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Sunday,28 June, 2009 | Hits: 65

‘We invest more in tech during a recession’

You can call John F Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore as the showcase research centre of General Electric (GE). Built on a 50-acre plush campus, the nine-year old R&D centre boasts of 4,200 employees and 870 patents. Its managing director Guillermo Wille’s pride in the centre is obvious when he talks of the massive contributions in developing most powerful aviation engines or baby warmers for rural areas. Bolivia-born Wille has found the key to getting the right talent—Indians studying in universities abroad. In a conversation with Pragati Verma, he explains what went into making it a success story and his plans to steer it ahead. Excerpts:...
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Sunday,28 June, 2009 | Hits: 126

India, turning on the heat

Nostalgic about good ol’ times when the climes were cooler, the variations more moderate and the temperatures less searing? Now that nostalgia comes with statistical backing. ...
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Saturday,27 June, 2009 | Hits: 57

Scarred by dirt and decay

Lazy roads meander their way to one of India’s most-famous hill stations. The roads are good, the frequent fencing painted, and every sharp turn marked by advice on safe driving. For any traveller escaping the baking plains, the vacation seems to start off just right. Barely an hour’s drive from Dehradun, Mussoorie promises a cool time. ...
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Saturday,27 June, 2009 | Hits: 85

Obama looks forward to work on climate change

US President Barack Obama looks forward to working with India and other representatives of the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF) on the issue of climate change during its meeting on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Italy next month, the White House has said. ...
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Saturday,27 June, 2009 | Hits: 97

Teri: Climate change may aid terrorists

Mountain passes in J&K have usually been blocked with show in the winter months, freezing the flow of terrorists into the state. Climate change could lead to further melting of snow on mountain passes which could further open up these routes to infiltrating terrorists, The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) has told the Army....
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Saturday,27 June, 2009 | Hits: 87