Sustainability Outlook Headlines

Jain Irrigation launches solar-powered micro irrigation system

Jain Irrigation today launched integrated solar powered micro irrigation systems for small farmers, which will ensure reliability of water supply and power supply.
"The integrated solar powered micro irrigation involving different components like development of on-farm water source (farm ponds, solar pumping systems, piping and micro irrigation systems) would ensure reliability of water and power supply to small farms, especially in developing countries like India, Africa and other countries in Asia," Jain Irrigation President Dilip Kulkarni said.
This concept works on solar... Read more..

Date : Sep 4

Source: Business Standard

Now, sell solar power to discoms to reduce electricity bill

Delhi took a huge leap in renewable energy generation on Tuesday. Power watchdog Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) announced regulations for net metering of renewable energy, giving Delhiites a chance to become renewable energy suppliers. The regulations outline how people can generate renewable energy in their premises, and then reduce their electricity bills by the amount of power they supply to the grid. The regulations are expected to be enforced within a week.
While the net metering regulations apply to all forms of renewable energy like solar, hydro and wind, in... Read more..

Date : Sep 4

Source: Times of India

Hareon Solar China partners with Nereus Capital to develop 150 MW solar assets in India over two years

Hareon Solar Technology Co., Ltd., a leading manufacturer of solar panels, announced that it will partner with alternative asset manager, Nereus Capital (“Nereus”) to develop over 150MW of solar power projects in India over the next two years.
“India is a compelling and growing market for solar PV projects,” said Dr. Jie Zhang, VP of Global Business Development of Hareon. “By partnering with a leading Indian private equity firm, we are able to apply leading technology and end-to-end financing to efficiently develop and construct solar projects.”
India currently suffers from a 9... Read more..

Date : Sep 4

Source: Panchabuta

Enrich Energy to Set up 60MW Solar Power Project in Telangana

Enrich Energy Private Limited, has got the approval for setting up 60 MW Solar Power Project under ‘Solar Park Concept’ in the newly formed state of Telangana. The ‘Solar Park’ will be set up under Open Offer to supply power to meet the states renewable power obligations. TSTRANSCO (erstwhile APTRANSCO) has issued a `Letter of Intent’ for setting up a 60 MW capacity Solar Park to Enrich Energy under the power purchase agreement at preferential tariff of Rs 6.49 per kWh as per the Open Offer.
Enrich Energy has developed and commissioned the first turnkey private Solar Park of India in... Read more..

Date : Sep 4

Source: Panchabuta

McCain, DuPont to empower Gujarat's potato farmers

McCain Foods and DuPont India are collaborating to implement the Global GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) Farm Assurer Certification Program with McCain contract farmers. The program is designed to equip farmers to follow GAP in order to ensure food, worker and environmental safety in growing potatoes sustainably while enhancing harvest quality and marketability.
"This is an innovative platform to empower McCain contract farmers. By encouraging farmers to follow good practices in agronomy and integrated pest management, the program enables sustainable production of potatoes — a win-... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: Times of India

Unilever-Solidaridad supply chain partnership grows from sugar to gherkins

A Unilever agreement with Solidaridad is set to extend supply chain sustainability beyond the usual suspects of tea and cocoa to vegetables like gherkins.

Date : Sep 3

Source: Food Navigator

Tea Board of India defers plant protection code

The industry is facing increased challenges by the way of awareness among consumers on the need for using safer, healthier and more environment-friendly products.
The Tea Board of India has decided to defer full implementation of the plant protection code (PPC) which was to be effective from September 1. It has now been deferred till January 2015.
The PPC is a comprehensive document, which lays down the manner in which chemicals are going to be used safely, in tea cultivation. The aim is to achieve sustainability through Good Agricultural Practices, including integrated pest... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: The Hindu

Review of five environment laws ordered

Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980; Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972; The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974; and The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 will be under the scanner.
A four-member high-level committee has been set up under former Cabinet Secretary T.S.R. Subramanian to examine five laws administered by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change.
The five laws to be put under the scanner are Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980; Wildlife (... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: The Hindu

Social groups to help promote segregation of Waste

The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation will soon appoint social groups to spread awareness about garbage segregation through street plays and other engaging initiatives.
While the municipal corporation has already procured special vehicles to collect segregated garbage, the objective has not been met as citizens are yet to gain understanding of this method.
At present, the municipal corporation has a door-to-door garbage collection system in all 64 wards, wherein 400 hopper autorickshaws, funded under the JNNURM, collect mixed garbage. The autorickshaws have two separate... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: Times of India

Canadian firms seeking partners in India in renewable energy

As many as 16 companies from Canada are exploring partnership opportunities with Indian firms in the renewable energy space.
A delegation of 16 Canadian companies will arrive here this week to attend the 8th Renewable Energy India 2014 Expo.
"The companies are actively exploring commercial partnership opportunities in India. The strength of the Canadian contingent is clear evidence of their interest in India's renewable energy market," an official statement by the Canadian High Commission said.
The delegation members will represent Simon Fraser University, Ballard... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: Economic Times

Union Government launched India's first ethanol-run bus in Nagpur

Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari launched ethanol-run environment-friendly public buses in Nagpur on 22 August 2014. These buses were launched as India's first pilot “The Green Bus project” to test ethanol-run buses.
It was claimed that the carbon-dioxide emissions from the bus will be as low as 75 per cent to 90 per cent - depending on the purity of ethanol. The Union government, Maharashtra state government and Nagpur Municipal Corporation will monitor the emissions of the new bus.
Ethanol-run bus project would help to reduce India’s petroleum product imports.India... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: Jagran Josh

BMC plans to build biogas plant in Deonar, India

Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in collaboration with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), is planning to build a biogas plant at the Deonar abattoir, India, to process all the animal waste.
BARC nuclear agriculture and biotechnology division professor Sharad Kale told Daily News & Analysis said: "A plant had been initially been set up at the abattoir on a pilot project in 2003. It was later decided that it should be implemented on a bigger scale.
The plant will use the BARC-developed Nisargruna technology to handle bio-degradable waste in order to reduce the... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: Biofuels and Biomass

As wind abates, TNEB pins hope on new power plants

Alarm bells ring for Tamil Nadu Electricity Board with the advent of September, when wind power generation halts and makes the state's energy position tricky. The board will have to depend on thermal power, its primary source, at a time when central power plants also go offline for maintenance. To make matters worse, many central plants are currently shut due to shortage of coal.
The board's plan to bring power from northern states has been derailed by the Central Electricity Authority's allocation of space in the Sholapur-Raichur transmission line to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: Times of India

Swachh Bharat programme: CIL earmarks Rs 235 crore for sanitation

State-run miner Coal India has said it will spend Rs 235 crore for providing sanitation in schools and underprivileged homes during the current fiscal, dedicating as much as half of the funds earmarked for corporate social responsibility to the cause espoused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"This is the single largest project being undertaken ever by CILBSE 0.44 % under sanitation vprojects. Each of the eight CIL subsidiaries will identify at least one backward village under its command area in which projects will be undertaken. Additionally, other villages are being undertaken in... Read more..

Date : Sep 3

Source: Economic Times

Nereus Capital Raises IFC Investment for India Projects

The World Bank’s International Finance Corp. unit has agreed to invest in a fund managed by Nereus Capital Management LLC that’s targeting clean-energy companies in India.
The $20 million investment is part of $250 million that Nereus plans to raise in the next year, Nereus founder Jonathan Winer said today in a phone interview from New Delhi. It already raised more than $20 million from another investor whom Winer declined to identify, citing a confidentiality agreement.
Nereus seeks to “develop hard assets on the ground,” Winer said. “We’re trying to back companies with... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Bloomberg

Tata solar Power wins order from JNNSM

Tata Power Solar (TPS) has won one of the largest orders of JNNSM phase-2 batch-1. The company will supply the entire module requirement for the 20 MW (AC) project to be built by ACME Solar, a leading solar power developer in India. The 1,00,000 modules, constituting 60,00,000 cells, needed for the project will be manufactured at TPS' state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Bangalore.
ACME Solar, during the JNNSM bidding last year, won projects totalling 100 MW. Of this, 20 MW, under domestic content requirement (DCR) policy of MNRE, needs to be constructed using cells and... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Times of India

Water ATMs: India’s Solution To Clean Water?

If at all there is fear for a third world war, it could be over drinking water. Fresh water is a scare commodity today. The issue of fresh water shortage is taken quite lightly in our country. How many are aware that India has just four percent of the world’s fresh water while accounting for 16 percent of the global population?
In India, having a tap to turn on for clean water is a luxury. It’s not an unusual scene in India’s urban slums or neighbourhoods to see women and children line up with empty buckets waiting for the tanker truck to arrive. Even in rural areas women would walk... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: The Viewpaper

Japan to Invest in Bullet Trains, Ganga Clean-up: Top 10 Takeaways

Here are the top 10 takeaways from the talks
1. India's bullet train project will receive financial, technical and operational support from Japan.
2. Japan will invest $33 billion in five years in India, a chunk of which will go into PM Modi's pet projects for cleaning up the river Ganga and for developing smart cities.
3. Japan will invest substantially in the Metro project in Ahmedabad in Mr Modi's Gujarat.
4. The two countries decided to set a target of doubling Japan's foreign direct investment and the number of Japanese companies in India within five years.... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: NDTV

Jakson Group to have Rs 2,700 crore turnover by 2017

Power solutions provider Jakson Group is aiming to have a turnover of Rs 2,500 crore by 2017 based on its fast moving solar division.
The group is also aiming to produce 100 MW solar power in next 2-3 years as an independent power producer (IPP) with an investment of upto Rs 700 crore.
"We want to move on 100 MW in next 2-3 years time frame. We would be investing around Rs 500 to Rs 700 crore to come up to a level of 100 MWs," Jakson Group Managing Director Sameer Gupta told PTI.
Presently, the company has a total installed capacity of 20 MW and 10 MW is under... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Business Standard

Solar energy can create 6.7 lakh jobs in India in 10 years

Solar power generation has the potential to create close to seven lakh jobs in the country in the next 10 years, says a report.
Solar energy can create up to 1,45,000 MW of capacity and 6.7 lakh jobs in India over next 10 years, said the report, jointly prepared by Bridge To India and Tata Power Solar.
It examines the ideal solar road map for India through comparative analysis of four distinct scenarios of solar power generation – residential rooftops, large rooftops, utility scale projects and ultra-mega projects.
Each scenario is analysed in terms of not only levelised... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Economic Times

New 'biodiversity metric' developed to study climate change influence

Scientists have come up with a new biodiversity metric called phylogeographic endemism, to understand the influence of recurring climatic shifts over the last 120,000 years on current patterns of genetic diversity.
A team of researchers from the City College of New York led by biologist Dr. Ana Carnaval analyzed the effects of current and past climatic variation on the genetic diversity of 25 vertebrates in the highly diverse yet much threatened Brazilian Atlantic rainforest.
Carnaval said that they discovered that the climatic regimes of the northern and southern portions of... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Zee News

Illegal e-waste recycling booms in Moradabad

The Peetal Nagri (brass city) has become a hotbed for unauthorized e-waste recycling. Global recession and the decreasing demand for brass products in the West forced the manufacturers and the handicraft workers to adopt the hazardous e-waste recycling to earn their livelihood. E-waste contains PVC, used in circuit boards, that is banned by the Uttar Pardesh government under the Plastic Use and Disposal Act 2000.
The Moradabad administration has not been able to crackdown these unauthorized workshops posing a threat to the regional environment and health of the workers. E-waste... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Times of India

Scientists Come Up With Transparent Solar Panels

Scientists are working really hard to come up with means of shifting to a type of renewable energy that is easy to implement and efficient enough to match our energy requirements. Out of all the ones explored so far, solar energy appears to be the most successful candidate. However, think of solar energy and solar panels and what you imagine right away are fields of blue Silicon or patchwork that covers the roof of buildings. However, scientists have come up with a new type of solar panel that can be affixed directly over a window in order to make most out of the sun’s energy while being... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Wonderful Engineering

Used Tires Could Find Second Life in Batteries

Hundreds of millions of tires reach the end of their first life each year in the United States. The majority of these tires are recycled into road paving materials, plastic additives, and other useful materials. But, a significant waste stream remains, providing an opportunity for new applications for wasted rubber.
This month, the chemistry journal RSC Advances published a paper outlining a process for converting used rubber tires into anodes for lithium-ion batteries. Authored by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), this paper discusses the process for converting... Read more..

Date : Sep 2

Source: Scientific American

NTPC looks ahead to PM's US visit for its geo-thermal project

State-owned power major NTPC is looking at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's proposed visit to the United States to harness its plan for the country's first eco-thermal project.
"We may need to send a team to the US to identify agencies for collaboration. But this will be taken at the government level after the Prime Minister's visit to the US. At present the geo-thermal project is at an exploratory stage and the DPR 9 detailed project report is being prepared," Roy Choudhury said on the sidelines The Bengal Chamber of Commerce organised environment and energy conclave here today.... Read more..

Date : Sep 1

Source: Business Standard