Cement Energy and Environment

alliance will focus on harmonisation of action, such as developing standards for products and processes , and procurement methods. Lauding the alliance, a spokesperson of International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental organisation focused on transitioning to a sustainable energy future, said, "IRENA commends PM Modi and India for this initiative which further demonstrates a strong commitment to renewable energy. The agency looks forward to collaborating as the alliance takes further shape." As ET earlier reported, New Delhi has already indicated it will commit about $90 million to set up the alliance headquarters in the country and to meet recurring costs for the first five years. The government is also working to build a corpus of about $400 million, drawn from membership fees, contributions from bilateral and multilateral agencies . It is reaching out to financial institutions like the LIC, SBI, as well as corporations like NTPC, ONGC, and Coal India to contribute to the corpus. The interest on the corpus will be used to meet the recurring cost. 'This alliance is a delivery institution, it doesn't propose to replicate existing institutions, but to supplement and complement them," said Upendra Tripathy , secretary at the ministry of new and renewable energy . Experts say that such a collaborative effort will not only help curb emissions, but also help avoid future emissions. It is argued that increased access to energy through solar deployment will help countries by creating direct and indirect employment opportunities. It will be possible for micro, small , and medium enterprises that form the manufacturing backbone of the economy to augment its productivity in a manner that is clean and sustainable. The potential for gains are immense. The idea is to create collaborative platforms for increased deployment of solar technologies to improve access to energy and create opportunities for better livelihoods, especially in rural and remote areas. The effort is to improve the standards of living in clean and sustainable manner. "The alliance will have innovative delivery and financial mechanism. It will run with projects and programmes in partnership with member countries and organisations," Tripathy said. The alliance will work with partner countries to identify national opportunities to accelerate development and deployment of existing solar technologies. As partners, countries will choose the activities they want to pursue together. Courtesy: The Economic Times, Paris, 30.11.2015, From Internet SOLAR SHOULD NOT BE SOLE CLIMATE BASKET Solar alliance welcome but consider other options, too India is taking a proactive role in combating climate change by spearheading a global solar alliance. This is welcome. There are energy economists who are so sanguine on the prospects of solar energy as to forecast all energy in the globe being drawn from this source by 2030. They extrapolate the steady reduction in the cost of solar power and of electricity storage to reach this conclusion . If it happens, well and good. India should have an aggressive research project in solar energy, so as to both contribute to new cutting-edge technology in the field and also usefully absorb advanced technologies that others produce. Yet, it would be a mistake to put all our climate change fighting eggs in the solar basket. India must be equally aggressive, if not more, in exploring clean coal technologies, to exploit the country's most abundantly available fossil fuel in the least damaging fashion. The technology options are not limited to going ultra critical with power plants, so as to double thermal efficiency, and deploying high quality filters and precipitators and catalytic converters to minimise emission of greenhouse gases from thermal plants. Another route is to convert coal into natural gas, preferably in situ, and burn the gas in combined cycle plants to raise thermal efficiency to close to 60%. Experiments are on elsewhere in the world to crack natural gas, that is, separate the molecules of carbon and hydrogen that combine to form methane, and use hydrogen as fuel. When hydrogen burns, the output is heat and water. Some try to use biotechnology to raise sunlight-to– food conversion in photosynthesis. Others seek to grow tough plant fibre , absorbing carbon dioxide in the process , and use the fibre to reinforce concrete. Nuclear fission and fusion remain attractive research propositions for the future.