Cement, Energy and Environment

project developers. The American Power Act Bill introduced by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman seeks to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, and has explicit provisions to allow COM credits. The American Power Act Bill proposes an overall cap of 2 billion offsets per annum to be traded from 2013, of which about 500-million offsets will be accepted from international projects. India is a big market for COM projects and accounts tor about a fourth of the over 2144 COM projects registered with UNFCCC. India is the second largest seller of CERs after China and accounts for about a Energy NATIONAL MISSION ON CLEAN POWER PLANNED A national technology mission initiative on 'Clean Carbon Technologies', which will focus on clean power generation, is in the offing, according to the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Union Government, Dr. R. Chidambaram. Three expert groups are preparing reports tor the directions to be taken in the mission. A prototype, a 125 MW combined cycle coal gasification plant has been set up at Vijayawada, under consortium including BHEL and APTransco. Similarly, an 800 MW supercritical thermal power plant needs to be put in place. BHEL, fifth of the over 41 0 million CERs issued by the UNFCCC. Courtesy: TERI (The Energy Resources Institute) Newswire, 16-31May 2010, P19. CEMENT INDUSTRY TO INVEST RS1 00 BILLION 11'1 ECO-FRIENDLY TECHNOLOGIES The Indian cement industry was planning to invest about Rs 100 billion for making cement manufacturing environment friendly by reducing energy consumption and cutting carbon emissions over the next five years. Executive President of Birla Corporation Ltd G. Jayaraman said. He suggested restrictions on use of high grade cement as it was adding to high NEWS BRIEF NTPC, IGCAR, and a host of other institutes should be involved. Under the initiative, voluntary organizations in rural areas are involved, under the leadership of a scientist, to take up problems that can be solved using technology. So far five RUTAGs have been started at five IITs. Plans are afoot to expand them in the near future. Courtesy: TERI (The Energy Resources Institute) Newswire, 16-31May 2010. P14. MINISTERIAL PANEL PLANNED FOR RATIONALISING COAL SOURCING The government will soon set up an inter-ministerial task force to rationalize coal sourcing so as to help key consumers in the power, steel and cement energy consumption. Speaking at the sixth Green Cementech- 201 0, a two -day meet organized by Cll on making Indian cement plants world class in green technology, Mr. Jayaraman stated that the trend of making cement plants green was in consonance with modernization of existing plants and designing new energy efficient plants. Cement units in the country used to consume 115 to 125KWh of energy per tonne of cement produced earlier, but it had now come down to as low as 80 to 70 KWh, he explained. Courtesy: TERI (The Energy Resc'Jrces Institute) Newswire, 1-15 May 2010, P12. sectors optimize transportation costs. Coal Minister Sriparkash Jaiswal had recently convened a meeting of top government officials, including Coal secretary C Balakrishan and Coal India Chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya, who deliberated on the matter and suggested the formation of an inter-ministerial panel. "It has been decided to constitute an inter-ministerial task force with members from ministers like Coal, Power, Steel. Railways, Central Electricity Authority, Coal India (CIL) and other state-owned coal firms, NTPC, and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Jaiswal said. Courtesy: The Economic Times, New Delhi, May 12, 2010. 46