In March 2022, Nitin Gadkari (Minister for Road Transport & Highways, GoI) went viral on Twitter when he arrived at the parliament in a green hydrogen-powered car – the Toyota Mirai. In Japanese, the word Mirai means future; it is one of the few cars developed that run on hydrogen-powered fuel cells. The minister’s drive to the parliament was to raise awareness about India’s vision to replace coal and petrol with green hydrogen.
Climate change is adversely affecting our planet by causing extreme weather events like heat waves, tropical storms, forest fires, bringing alterations in crop production etc.
India along with the UK launched ‘One Sun, One World, One Grid’ (OSOWOG) initiative at the COP 26 Climate Meet in Glasgow. This project is about setting a trans-national electricity grid to generate and supply solar power across the world. It is an initiative of ISA( International Solar Alliance), which is an alliance of 121 countries which receive good sunlight throughout most of the year. The ISA was first proposed by the Indian prime minister in 2015 in his speech in London. The World Bank’s technical assistance team is supposed to design the blueprint print for the project. The vision behind One Sun One world One grid(OSOWOG) is that the sun never sets on earth, there is always some place where the sun is shining and that can be utilized to generate energy.
India’s northern plains are home to the most polluted cities on the planet, with 13 of them making it to the top 15 most polluted cities in the world. India’s vehicular pollution added more than 300 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere and it is only going to increase if the country doesn’t take drastic steps towards green sources of energy like green hydrogen . The steel industry heavily relies on fossil fuel for heating iron making furnaces 50% of the heating furnaces in Indian coal industry is coal, it resulted in more than 240 tons of carbon dioxide in the last year which is 12% of India’s carbon emission. There is an industry wide consensus that the use of green hydrogen can drastically improve the efficiency and the state of carbon emissions of the steel industry.
Few decades ago nuclear power was hailed as one of the cleanest sources of energy, with a few hiccups caused by the concerns about possible meltdowns and radiation leakage, multiple nuclear plants were set up in developed nations. Although there have been speculations about the sustainability and safety of nuclear plants, most of the scientific community has agreed that they are pretty safe if constructed with proper precautions and with proper safety measures away from population, even the Fukushima disaster is seen as an anomaly. Nuclear power has for long been a source of clean energy before solar power became a popular and economically viable option. And as the world races to eradicate the dependence on fossil based electricity generating systems, the role of nuclear energy cannot be underestimated as it constitutes a large portion of the electric consumption in many countries.
With the whole world locked down inside their homes for the past two years, video streaming services have seen a boom in their growth like never before. More people are engaged with their phones to watch video content not only for entertainment purposes but also because they have to attend meetings and watch lectures. A whole industry has evolved behind this habit of binging video content that keeps out pumping episodes and movies every week. Does this rapid growth in the streaming industry and the resultant surge caused in the energy consumption match with the growth in the sustainable energy sources? Is the whole system of ever awake data storage centers and networks, high speed cellular connectivity and the ability to reliably stream literally anything anytime, energy intense enough to move the needle on carbon emissions?
The hunt for possible energy resources that are renewable and might perhaps bring down the GHGs emission has been carried out for decades. The consumption of bio-ethanol in India, the 6th largest producer of biofuels globally has drawn the attention of those interested in sustainable climate. Indian production and consumption of ethanol, a renewable energy source, that generates comparatively a lower carbon footprint in comparison to conventional fuels, indicates the promising role of bio-fuels in regulating and mitigating the global temperature. Could ethanol be the potential substitute for a sustainable and greener future?
With the rapid push towards reversing climate change, every country is facing its own set of challenges but especially the developing nations.
Rural women are changing their economic game of their MSMEs with Solar refrigerators supplied by a Mumbai-based venture
India is one of the fastest-growing economies and the third-largest consumer of energy worldwide, standing right after the US and China in the ranks. To become a USD 5 trillion economy, as a developing nation, there is one thing that India will need for sure - an uninterrupted supply of energy.
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Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master, it was rightly said. Electronic devices have grown into an inevitable part of our daily lives.