Green buildings to change India’s skyline by 2010

December 28th, 2008 Posted in Energy, India, Infrastructure
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 - The Financial Express

There will be over 1,000 green buildings dotting the Indian skyline by 2010 saving energy. Already 375 buildings are under construction. Indian industry will also be a key player in the $40-billion green building material business in the world. There will be over 50,000 accredited green professionals in the country to make India a leading player in green building business and technologies.

The green building goal is set by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC). It envisages one billion sq ft of green building footprint to be registered for certification by 2012, 1,000 green buildings to be registered by 2010, a major share in the $40-billion market for green building materials by 2012 and training of 5,000 IGBC accredited green building professionals by 2010.

“With a modest beginning of 20,000 sq ft, green footprint in the country in 2003, today about 375 green building, including 77 houses, measuring over 25 million sq ft, are being constructed all over India under the IGBC Green Homes Certification programme’’, C N Raghavendran, chairman, IGBC, Chennai chapter, said here on Monday. With the current growth rate, India would be one of the world leaders in green buildings and technologies, he said.

In his address at the three-day `Energy Summit 2008’ – energy efficiency in buildings, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he said, green buildings save up to 30% to 40% energy compared to other new buildings mainly through an integrated approach to design and construction.

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Indian Oil Corp plans to buy sugar mill in Brazil

December 16th, 2008 Posted in Brazil, Energy, India
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International Business Times

State-run Indian Oil Corp is planning to buy a sugar mill and set up a refinery in Brazil to produce ethanol, the Indian government said on Monday.

Indian oil firms view investments in Brazil for ethanol production as highly strategic, the country’s junior food, minister, Akhilesh Prasad Singh, told parliament in a written reply to a question.

Another Indian petroleum refiner, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd, was working with Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. for investments in the country to produce ethanol, the minister said.

He told lawmakers India’s ethanol production was estimated at 2,730 million litres in the year to September 2008, down from 2,900 litres a year ago.

India, which imports 70 percent of the oil it consumes and heavily discounts fuel sales, asked oil firms to mix ethanol with petrol to 10 percent from October, when the new sugarcane crushing season began.

Before October, oil firms were mixing 5 percent ethanol, an alternative fuel made from cane or corn, with petrol almost nationwide. India has set an ambitious target of reaching 20-percent biofuel use within a decade.

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First Major Energy Study Shows That Wind Is The Cleanest Source

December 13th, 2008 Posted in Energy
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Device Daily

[N]obody conducted an elaborated study to find out the best ways to fight against global warming, reduce pollution, and which are best renewable energies, therefore Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, decided to do something about this and he conducted the first major and scientific energy-related study.

He says that the best ways to accomplish our green goals are “blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants.” Also, he added that the so-called clean coal is “not clean at all.”

Here is Jacobson’s list of clean energies from best to worst:

1. Wind Power

2. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)

3. Geothermal Power

4. Tidal Power

5. Solar Photovoltaics

6. Wave Power

7. Hydroelectric Power

The professor says that we should forget and go against nuclear, clean coal, corn ethanol, and cellulosic ethanol. According to Jacobson’s findings, cellulosic ethanol is worse than corn ethanol as it releases more air pollutants, it requires more land for crops, and it damages the wildlife.

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Indian state of Rajasthan to attract USD $1.6 bn investment in renewable energy

December 2nd, 2008 Posted in Energy, India
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Economy and Politics – livemint.com

Rajasthan is set to attract an investment of Rs 8,000 crore (USD $1.6 bn) in renewable energy sector, with 14 companies proposing projects to tap power from wind and biomass.

Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation (RREC) chairman and managing director Rajeev Swaroop said that the state government has signed memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with 14 power companies to set up power plants in the field of wind biomass energy.

According to sources, there would be five wind energy projects in Jaisalmer, Barmer and Jodhpur with a generation capacity of 1,600 MW while eight biomass projects would be set up in Sirohi, Baran, Tonk, Alwar, Sawai Madhopur, Kota, Nagaur, Hanumangarh and Jalore districts.

“Suzlon Gujarat Wind Park Ltd, with a proposed investment of Rs 4,910 crore leads the table followed by Enercon (India) Ltd and Wish Wind Infrastructure Ltd with an investment of Rs1,072 crore and Rs888 crore respectively,” a source said.

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Indian Cleantech firms gearing up for bigger opportunities

November 27th, 2008 Posted in Energy, India
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The Economic Times

The Indian cleantech sector is broadly divided into three areas: clean energy, clean water and sustainable agriculture. Energy includes both generation and efficiency management companies while water has companies that are into filtration, desalination and conservation.

Sustainable agriculture involves the use of hybrid seeds, organic farming practices, cleaner pesticides and fertilisers. One of the early entrants in the Indian cleantech space was Pune-headquartered Praj Industries, which began in 1984 by offering technology, design and machinery to turn molasses (generated during sugar production) into alcohol for biofuels.

That’s been the experience of STEPS or Sustainable Technologies and Environmental Projects, another cleantech company founded by T Raghvendra Rao, an oil and gas sector veteran. It has developed technology to turn waste plastic into diesel and petrol, and is in final stages of negotiations to install its units in companies within India as well as in Spain, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.
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US Dept of Energy and Brazil to Commercialize Biofuels

November 22nd, 2008 Posted in Brazil, Energy
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Red, Green, and Blue

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras) are shacking up in hopes to better develop and commercialize biofuels.

The partnership between NREL and Petrobras helps solidify an agreement made between the United States and Brazil on March 9, 2007; it was signed by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Brazil Foreign Minister Celso Amorim.

NREL, a DOE Federally Funded Research and Development Center, is managed and operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy and Petrobras is the largest energy company in Latin America.

“By bringing Brazilian expertise together with some of the leading U.S. biofuels researchers at NREL, we will increase our knowledge and be able to more quickly commercialize renewable biofuels in the global marketplace,” said NREL Director Dan E. Arvizu.

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India’s IREDA gives green energy a USD $3,5 billion push

November 14th, 2008 Posted in Energy, India
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The Financial Express

Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (Ireda), an enterprise under the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE), would pump in approximately Rs 17,000 crore (USD $3,5 billion) to fund renewable energy (RE) sector projects during the 11 th Five Year Plan. The company would raise Rs 1,000 crore (USD $200 million) from foreign markets in the current financial year to finance the projects, a company official said.

Talking to FE, chairman and managing director of Ireda Debashish Majumdar said the company has been negotiating with several international lenders, including KfW Germany, European Investment Bank and Nordic Bank, to borrow funds.

According to the Planning Commission estimates, RE projects worth Rs 80,000 crore (USD $16 billion), which are expected to generate 15,000 mw power, would come up in the Plan. Of this, Mazumdar said, Ireda would pump in Rs 17,000 crore to help generate 5,000 mw power via RE. The company will extend its 70% of finance to wind energy sector while the remaining 30% would cover solar, bio mass and hydro projects. The company is also looking to issue zero coupon bonds to help raise funds, he added.

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Indian projects win ‘Green Oscars’

November 14th, 2008 Posted in Energy, India, Science and Innovation
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Financial Express :

Two Indian enterprises have won top prizes at this year’s prestigious Ashden Awards for sustainable energy, popularly known as the ‘Green Oscars’.

A Kerala-based company BIOTECH, involved in tackling the problem of dumped food waste, won the Ashden award carrying a monetary prize of 30,000 pounds while a Karnataka firm SELCO Solar Light Private Limited bagged the new Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award. Besides, SKG Sangha, a non-profit organisation based in Karnataka (supplies rural families with both dung based biogas plants for cooking and a
specially designed unit that turns the slurry from the biogas plant
into high quality fertiliser),received the second prize of 10,000 pounds.

BIOTECH was selected for tackling the problem of dumping of food waste in the streets of Kerala through installation of biogas plants that use the waste to produce gas for cooking and, in some cases, electricity for lighting.

To date BIOTECH has built and installed an impressive 12,000 domestic plants, 160 of which also use human waste from latrines(toilets) to avoid contamination of ground water, 220 institutional plants and 17 municipal plants that use waste from markets to power generations.

SELCO Solar Light Private limited had won the Ashden Award in 2005 and this year it won the new Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award in recognition of the remarkable progress it made during the last two years.

H Harish Hande, Managing Director of SELCO said since 2005, his company had increased total sales of solar systems from 48,000 to 71,000 despite nearly a 50 per cent increase in the price of small photo-voltaic modules on the world market.

“We have 25 service centres but we have a long way to go,” he said adding that if Government and financial institutions allocated enough funds for the programme it would help spread Solar Service for low-income households a great deal.

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OVL consortium bags Colombia oil block

November 14th, 2008 Posted in Energy, India
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The Economic Times

ONGC Videsh (OVL), the overseas arm of public sector oil explorer ONGC, has bagged an oil block in Colombia. OVL, as part of a 50:50consortium, has been awarded the block through an auction.

An ONGC official confirmed the development. “We will sign the contract in coming weeks,” he said. The other member of the consortium is a local oil and gas
firm, Pacific Stratus.

It is learnt that the consortium will invest $23 million in the first phase of exploration. The 550-km long block has a total area of 270,702 hectare and is adjacent to the La Creciente natural gas field, which is located in northwestern Colombia. The consortium will explore the block, which will remain the property of the Colombian government.

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European Scientists: ‘Let’s Set Up A Global Solar Energy Grid’

November 3rd, 2008 Posted in Energy, Infrastructure
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Makes sense for the Indian, Brazilian and Mexican scientists to get behind this.
Triple Pundit

The ground tone at the recent European Science Foundation conference about Nanotechnology for Sustainable Energy was overly clear about it; Europe is ready to accelerate development of nano technologies. The conference focused on solar rather than other sustainable energy sources such as wind, because that is where nanotechnology is most applicable and also because solar energy conversion holds the greatest promise as a long-term replacement of fossil fuels.

Solar energy can be harvested directly to generate electricity or to yield fuels such as hydrogen for use in engines. Such fuels can also in turn be used indirectly to generate electricity in conventional power stations. “The potential of solar power is much, much larger in absolute numbers than that of wind,” according to Professor Bengt Kasemo, who chaired the conference and who is attached to the Chalmers University of Technology.

“If solar energy is harvested where it is most abundant, and distributed on a global net (easy to say – and a hard but not impossible task to do) it will be enough to replace a large fraction of today’s fossil-based electricity generation,” said Kasemo. “It also would solve the day/night problem and therefore reduce storage needs because the sun always shines somewhere.”

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