Future of Solar Power

June 19th, 2010

Nearly a quarter of the world’s electricity supplies are expected to come from solar power by 2050 as per a report published recently by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Eleven percent of total supplies are predicted to come from solar panels installed locally i.e on rooftops of homes and offices while a further 11 percent will be provided by central solar power stations feeding clean electricity to populous areas.
Solar power currently accounts for just 0.5 percent of total electricity supplies, but there must be a substantial increase in solar power generation if significant amount of carbon emission reductions are to be achieved and prevent runaway green house gas effects thus making our planet even hotter.
The IEA expects North America to be the largest producer of Concentrating Solar Power electricity, followed by India and North Africa — which will likely export half of its output to Europe.

With further improvements in solar technology, drop in cost of solar panels and brighter sun we can expect a dazzling future for solar power.

For complete article click, http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/12/solar.energy.iea.report/index.html

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Strategic Review of Environment Aspects and Impacts of Indian Transportation Sector

November 27th, 2009

There has been growing attention to the energy and environmental resource demands of transportation systems at national, regional and city levels. Currently, societies are expending enormous resources – financial, natural, human, technological etc for meeting ever expanding transportation needs so as to enhance quality life in an effective manner. Multipronged approaches are currently in vogue to maximize positive externalities and minimize risks. While there is desire to think in a holistic manner for addressing the innate intricacies and interconnectedness involved in social, economic, and environmental aspects of transportation sector but conflicting interests, divergent perspectives and competing demands for resources limit identification and implementation of options. As a result, governments often tend to respond in knee-jerk manner. Hence ad-hocism and crisis management are the key drivers of decision making.

Proper transport facilities connecting rural and urban regions form the pre-requisite for the development of any nation. The global human population has increased at fourfold rate in the 20th century but the movement of people and goods increased by one hundred fold. Currently world fleet is growing twice the rate of growth of population. But the growth rate of fleet is higher among the developed countries compared to the developing countries. According to Global Insight, global passenger car production in 2007 rose to 52.1 million units from 49.1 million in 2006. If light trucks are added, the combined total in 2007 is 75.8 million units. According to PWC projections, by 2015 worldwide capacity of cars and light trucks production is expected to be 97 million units (Renner M, 2008).

Evidences across the world showcase the manifold impacts of transport sector on environment and its resources in terms of depletion of non -renewable fossil fuels as well as contributing to global and local emissions. For instance, transport sector is estimated to contribute around 20% of the global Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. For instance, data shows that emissions of CO2 (major GHG) from the burning of fossil fuels increased by a factor of seven during the 20th century; with a corresponding increase of about a third in atmospheric CO2 levels (OECD, 2000).

Motorized mobility has contributed significantly in improving quality of life as well as in increasing access to resources and services for all sections of society including the poor and underprivileged in far-flung and remote areas. It has expanded the intellectual horizons, contributed towards efficient production and distribution thereby deterred starvations to a great extent. While acknowledging the positive socio-economic contributions made by the increases in mobility, it should also be highlighted that further increases in mobility could be detrimental to society as the societies may become more polarized, more dispersed, more anonymous, less child-friendly, less culturally distinctive, less physically healthy, more crime-ridden, and even less democratic (FT Automotive, 1998).

Apart from the global emissions, transport sector contributes significantly to regional and local level environmental problems, which have human health impacts. Major regional and local emissions contributed by the transport sector include Carbon Monoxide (CO), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Nitrous Oxides (NOX). Added to this, nuisance of noise and the congestion impacts of transportation along with increasing paving of the roads, spreading of urban sprawl, degradation of ecosystems, and interference with natural drainage have their role in deterioration of environmental profile in local, regional and global context. Transport is not only the major user of oil i.e., it accounts for around 60 per cent of the amount extracted but also consumer of major materials, including aggregates, cement, steel, and aluminum. It is said that production of vehicles and transport infrastructure accounts for 20.–.40 per cent of consumption of above stated materials (OECD, 2000). In the developed world context, both energy production and industrial growth have uncoupled from energy consumption and CO2 emissions but in the transport sector, growth in activity is linked with growth in emissions.

Increasing safety hazards and the social impacts of transportation further add to environmental problems enlisted above.  There is now a broad agreement that present trends in transport sector are not sustainable from environmental and socio-economic perspective and many conclude that fundamental changes in the technology, design, operation, financing and management of transport systems are needed. Hence the major challenge faced by policy makers is to enhance the benefits of transport in an equitable manner by simultaneously reducing the social and environmental externalities imposed by the same so as to make it sustainable.

World over, countries grappling with the multidimensional problems of transport sector and its interface with environment, has become a major challenge to policy makers to maintain/enhance transport benefits while reducing its impacts to sustainable level. Projections for 2030 shows that CO2 emissions by transport sector globally would almost double and the local criteria pollutions like CO, VOCs & NOx are also estimated to increase. The likely advances in technology will not be sufficient to overcome increased environmental impacts resulting from growing transport demand (OECD, 2000). This calls for innovative approaches, management tools and techniques for addressing these concerns and one such tool, which is emerging as a means for internalizing environmental and socio-economic externalities of transport sector as well as a approach for institutionalizing the same is Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).

Though there is an acknowledgment of non viability and unsustainability of the resource intensive transportation pathways adopted by the western societies, most of the developing countries, barring a few localized exceptions, tend to tread in the same direction. The hope that telecommunication revolution would assuage the ever growing demand of people transportation have been belied. Instead, through multiple information channels it further accentuated the transportation demands of people and goods. Increasing investments in personalized transport, expanding road networks through public and private investments, fascination for expensive public transportation systems are perceived as socially pragmatic solutions.

Identifying relevant aspects of the current state of the energy and environment and the likely evaluation of the scenarios is a critical need. Considering energy and environmental protection and energy conservation objectives, established at national, state and city level in an integrated manner including potential effects on issues such as biodiversity, population, human health, fauna, flora, soil, cultural heritage including architectural and archaeological heritage, landscape etc and energy consumption patterns and the interrelationship between the above factors should be periodically assessed and factored in the decision making process.

Environmental Issues in Transport Sector:

Vehicular emissions in urban areas is one of the major environmental concerns that gets highlighted from the perspective of local and global environmental impacts. Emissions such as CO, unburned HC, Pb compounds, NOx, soot, suspended particulate matter (SPM) and aldehydes etc create negative health impacts such as cough, headache, nausea, irritation of eyes, various bronchial problems and visibility. In global environmental perspective, increasing carbon footprints due to transportation in general and vehicular transport in particular are proving to be a critical concern for climate change.

India has 3.3 million kilometers of road network, which is the second largest in the world. Roads occupy an eminent position in transportation as they, as per the present estimate, carry nearly 65% of freight and 87% of passenger traffic.  Traffic on roads is growing at a rate of 7 to 10% per annum while the vehicle population growth, for the past few years, is of the order of 12% per annum. Experiences within and outside the country demonstrate that unlike other services, growth of transport services proportionately or even in greater proportion to economic growth influences the environment adversely. While both mobility of people and freight have been increasing across the nations and within the nations but in the context of this paper, focus is towards the mobility of people especially in the urban areas. Auto emissions currently account for approximately 70% of air pollution (Indianfoline, November 1999). The damages due to the health impacts of air pollution from mobile sources alone would rise from $ 520 million per year in 1995 to almost $ 7 billion annually, in real terms, by the year 2020. Evidence shows that increased urban traffic in India is contributing to deterioration in local and global air quality levels which requires policy, institutional and fiscal interventions from short terms to long term perspective.

Apart from expanding the road network, increasing investment in the public transport network that would entail reduction of both fossil fuel consumption and environmental pollution as well as improvement in the road safety has been the way forward. There is a need to evaluate the extent of improvement that will be brought about on a city, state, nation and global basis. Based on such an analysis, recommendations for further improvements to the proposed policies, plans, programmes and projects should be determined by forecasting the integrated impact of energy and environmental resource consumption and degradation levels of transportation solutions.

It is important to identify their role in urban transport by examining their plans and programmes, evaluating strengths and weaknesses of the current institutional framework and understanding the gaps and problems in existing level of work integration with each other. One of the major limitations identified by various systemic evaluations in the Indian transportation shows that there is a lack of awareness and capacities to evaluate options (short term & long term) and take appropriate decisions. Some of the salient features of Indian transport sector are:

  • Transport improvement plans/programs are undertaken on standalone basis without holistic assessment of the cumulative benefits/losses
  • Lack of integrated approach towards diagnosis and solving the air pollution emanating from vehicles
  • Cycle, pedestrians and other means of transport are not considered during transport planning stage
  • Focus is more on adopting the western style of transport system for Indian scenario without enough research and technical due diligence vis-à-vis Indian requirement
  • Less importance given to linkage between transport and land use planning while formulating transport plans/programs
  • Less emphasis given to improving mass transport system while formulating transport policies.

To address these issues and concerns, globally Strategic Environmental Assessment is being deployed for improving environmental outcomes of transport sector. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is an essential tool for effective decision-making in transport policy development and investment planning. It enables assessment  of impacts that go beyond the boundaries of individual projects or unitary planning authorities, and such impacts characterize investments in expanding trunk transport capacity. SEA also functions as an early warning system, identifying potential problems, and beginning consultation on resolving conflicts of interest, early in the planning process –reducing the risks of protests late in the day and the high costs associated with the delays that result

LEARNING FROM INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES:

Last decade has seen SEA developed for transport planning in many countries for instance, in US, some states has environment policy laws, which require environmental impact assessment for plans. In these cases, state or local governments conduct environmental impact studies before approving transportation plans or comprehensive plans. A number of EU countries are applying SEA at regional level. Some regional governments of Spain and Italy have passed legislation for SEA of transport activities/land use plans. These experiences show that SEA for transport sector evaluates both transportation performance measures and environmental quality indicators. Some of the transportation performance measures included measures of delay and traffic congestion and predicted model. The environment quality indicators included air quality, noise, land use, water quality, and damage to ecosystem. Based on SEA output, considerable public consultations are carried out and a transportation plan is accepted which would represent the balance between environment and transport benefit. For areas, which do not meet air quality standard, legislation requires that the transportation plan demonstrate how air quality standards will be met in the future. In certain cases it involved quantitative modeling of air emissions from transportation sources. If the transportation plan fails to show that it will contribute to air quality levels that satisfy the standards, then the project is not allowed.

Usually environmental evaluation at SEA stage addresses following impact areas:

  • traffic congestion,
  • energy consumption,
  • air quality,
  • land use,
  • community impacts,
  • water resources and
  • land resources

In some cases, SEA also included social impacts with scope limited to effects on mobility, health and living conditions in nearby communities.

The need for building in social, economic and environmental concerns right at the inception of a project and to have an interactive and cumulative planning system has been recognized and accepted in almost all policy documents. However despite all the right policy documents, the impact of these concerns has been rather limited. This is because the policy provisions haven’t been translated into adequate implementation measures, and there has been no integration with the policies of other sectors. There appears to be a lack of coordination between agencies like in the transport and land development sectors-partly because of inadequate participation of local bodies. Therefore mechanisms for integrated transport planning strategies and urban and regional settlement strategies need to be put in place to minimize the stress on environment and developed modes complement each other.

Today the role of a transport system is increasingly seen with a different perspective-its performance is to be judged not in transport terms, but in relation to its delivery of the wider community objectives. It is now evident that a much cleverer and more integrated approach is required that calls upon a range of multi-modal infrastructure and non-infrastructure measures to address transport problems and objectives. Which transport systems are chosen and how efficiently they deliver answer many questions about a city’s /country’s future. Successful Urban transport projects require supportive policy settings like transport demand management, suitable land use planning, economic instruments, modal integration with non-motorized transport, public awareness and support, viable financing etc. This integrated and comprehensive approach to transport planning is evident in countries and regions that have deployed SEA as a management tool.

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Assessment of Entrepreneurial based Community led Sustainable development initiatives in India: Learnings & Way Forward

November 24th, 2009

Developmental interventions and initiatives to become sustainable not only require strategic options with a long-term perspective but also mandate higher degree of integration among the sectoral agencies. Both these need capabilities and outlooks that are entirely different from that are currently in vogue among various stakeholders in developing countries. A sustainable development strategy as defined by OECD is “a co-ordinated set of participatory and continuously improving processes of analysis, debate, capacity-strengthening, planning and investment, which integrates the economic, social and environmental objectives of society, seeking trade offs where this is not possible”. At the macro level new patterns of working are gradually getting evolved whereby attempts are being made to overcome traditional fragmented approach and at the micro level new institutional set ups are being evolved to bring sustainability dimensions in implementation of the plans, programs and projects. The following elements are considered as critical for sustainability dimensions to developmental interventions:

  • Integration of economic, social & environmental objectives
  • People Centered & effective participation
  • Consensus on long-term vision
  • Decentralised levels according to most effective level of governance
  • Incorporate monitoring, learning and continuous improvement
  • Broad participation, effective partnerships, transparency and accountability
  • Development of capacities and an enabling environment, building on existing knowledge and processes.
  • Focus on priorities, outcomes & coherent means of implementation
  • Targeted with clear budgetary priorities

The developmental initiatives become sustainable if they work by:

  • Moving from developing and implementing fixed plans, ideas and solutions towards operating an adaptive system that can continuously improve governance to promote coherence between responses to different challenges.
  • Moving from a view that it is the state alone, which is responsible for development towards one that sees responsibility with society as a whole.
  • Moving from centralised and controlled decision-making towards sharing results and opportunities, transparent negotiation, co-operation and concerted action.
  • Moving from a focus on outputs (e.g. projects and laws) towards a focus on outcomes (e.g. impacts of projects and legal changes).
  • Moving from sectoral towards integrated planning.
  • Moving from a dependence on external assistance towards domestically driven and financed development.
  • Moving towards a process, which can accommodate monitoring, learning and improvement.

Sustainable development has important political, institutional and capacity implications. At the national and local level, it requires cross-sectoral and participatory institutions and integrating mechanisms, which can engage governments, civil society and the private sector in developing shared visions, planning and decision-making. Achieving sustainable development will require deep structural changes and new ways of working in all areas of economic, social and political life. This will include promoting pro-poor economic growth and reforming fiscal policies, which negatively affect the poor or promote environmental damage.

Decentralisation can foster development policies and strategies suited to local social, economic and environmental conditions. It can potentially promote good governance structures, which are responsive to the appropriate stake holder’s needs. Successful decentralization depends on a clear definition of the respective roles of local, regional and national level authorities and the development of effective local level institutions for planning and decision-making.

There have been different types of decentralized developmental interventions across a wide spectrum of sectors within the urban and rural landscape in India, which divulge the contours of the sustainability dimensions. Development interventions over the decades in India have shown that there are limits to which State can efficiently and effectively intervene. This experience has led the state gradually paving way to market and non- governmental organizations so as to address the limitations that it faced during its interventions. Once subjected to the sustainability test, most of these initiatives even in partnership with critical stakeholders have been assessed to be weak. But there are multiple examples of public private partnerships that have been effective in bridging these limitations. The spatial dimension of these initiatives is at various levels (i.e., community, village, city, state and national level). For sake of illustration, the author has chosen a few range of initiatives for understanding the contours of the sustainability dimension among them so as to present critical aspects and sustainability aspects among them. Some of the initiatives that have been evaluated in this paper are:

  • Joint Forest Management in Forestry Sector
  • Municipal Solid Waste Management in Urban Sector
  • Watershed Development Program – Dryland regions
  • User Management of Water Resources
  • Renewable energy applications such as biogas etc in energy sector
  • Common effluent treatment facilities for waste water and hazardous waste management in industrial sector
  • Information and communication technologies for rural development etc.

Changes in the policy, institutional framework and implementation mechanisms have evolved in various developmental sectors like irrigation, watershed management, rural development, urban and industries etc in response to globalization and liberalization of Indian economy as initiated in the mid 1980s and early 1990s. Certain services earlier either delivered or considered as responsibility of the state for improving their effectiveness and efficiency, the state has consciously attempted to transfer operation and management to the community based structures or private sector. In most of these interventions, lack of scope of private sector participation has not necessitated to evolve new approaches wherein the state has been given the management role of common resources or the common assets created to the community.

Each of these developmental interventions have been qualitatively evaluated on the following criteria:

  • Integration of economic, social & environmental objectives
  • People Centered & effective participation
  • Consensus on long-term vision
  • Decentralised levels according to most effective level of governance
  • Incorporate monitoring, learning and continuous improvement
  • Broad participation, effective partnerships, transparency and accountability
  • Development of capacities and an enabling environment, building on existing knowledge and processes
  • Focus on priorities, outcomes & coherent means of implementation and
  • Targeted with clear budgetary priorities

While there have been ample examples of successes and failures of each of these initiatives, the critical aspects of sustainability if assessed in each of these above interventions in India showcase few learning points summarized in the following section.

New forms of partnerships among stakeholders such as state, private sector, civil society etc needs to be formed. The state should play a role in policy development, regulation, facilitation, provision for basic social services, monitoring, evaluation etc. The role of civil society must go beyond that of advocacy to include undertaking capacity building of beneficiaries and community services as well as mentoring for entrepreneurship and provide for innovations in the interventions. Similarly the private sector ought to go beyond playing its role in commercial activities to providing goods and services with ‘private goods’ characteristics.

Decentralized management of natural resources need not result in improving social and environmental outcomes. Unless social capital of the region is enhanced, decentralization can only further the interests of the local elite and the entreched interests. For example, an interview based study of forest management in state of Rajasthan demonstrated the way a de jure institution transformed into a stable system of extra-legal exchanges (Robbins 2000). The study shows the range of de facto prices for various uses of the forest and explains how personal connections interacted with payoffs to favor some individuals and families over others. As a result, many of the national conservation goals are unmet with some species of trees and wildlife becoming particularly endangered. Households lost the ability to complain because of their own complicity. Increased “oversight” would have been ineffective. According to Robbins, nothing will change without a change in local power relations (Robins, 2003).

Community owned and community management have been successful only in those regions that have either aprior a well knit community structure or external agencies (NGOs) invested in social capital formation to build community structures (as part of the project activities) in tribal and rural settings. Again experience shows that community structures are not only difficult to build and time consuming but there are limited possibilities of replication of success even in a similarly placed socio – economic, political and geographical settings.

While accepting the importance of the community structure is providing the management framework, this paper argues that in interventions that have provided scope of evolution and nurturing of entrepreneurship and/or provided a role for market mechanism had a greater chances of success and sustenance of the interventions.  It is often not highlighted but critical, for the developmental interventions to be successful and sustainable, there is a need for appropriate policy and institutional framework at the national and state level. This framework needs to provide an outline of the direction without being highly prescriptive, then the immense opportunities for the evolution of innovation approaches at the micro level get scuttled. New forms of partnerships among stakeholders such as state, private sector, civil society etc needs to be formed. The state should play a role in policy development, regulation, facilitation, provision for basic social services, monitoring, evaluation etc. The role of civil society must go beyond that of advocacy to include undertaking capacity building of beneficiaries and community services as well as mentoring for entrepreneurship and provide for innovations in the interventions. Similarly the private sector ought to go beyond playing its role in commercial activities to providing goods and services with ‘private goods’ characteristics.

The decentralization of the management of natural resources has not expected positive outcomes primarily because the institutional and management innovations were fully designed from the top. External initiations of village committees have ended up creating interface organizations that are neither socially legitimate nor effective (Oyono, 2005).

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Multiculturalism – Ethics & Values in Addressing Environmental Concerns across the World

November 4th, 2009

The perspective and orientation of an individual, organization, region or a nation towards environment and environmental problems differs widely depending on the socio-economic, political and cultural influences and experiences. These apart, spatio-temporal factors also play critical role in shaping the values, ethics, outlook and actions towards environmental management. Hence one tends to witness plethora of unresolved, persisting squabbles and skirmishes on environmental problems from local to global level.

Analysts have shown that there are fundamental problems in the way philosophical and religio-cultural outlook of the western world has evolved since ancient times in general and more particularly in the modern industrial times in addressing environmental issues. It is also demonstrated that oriental philosophical outlook is more attuned towards nurturing and caring relationship with the surrounding environments. A deeper level analysis in the western and eastern world context reveals that such unequivocal differentiation does not stand scrutiny of scientific evidence as there are elements of learning across different cultures and traditions that are paving way for evolution of a new paradigm of environmental ethics. Thus, multiculturalism is playing vital role in evolution of the paradigm and thought processes of environmental ethics. Some of the key elements of multiculturalism contributing towards determining environmental ethic include

  • Extending the scope of ethical concerns beyond one’s community and nation to include not only all people everywhere, but also animals and the whole of nature – the biosphere – both now and beyond the imminent future to include future generations
  • Multidisciplinary inputs are factored into its evolution
  • Basic tenets are sourced from and embodied in various well established cultural traditions
  • It strives towards a global perspective with inputs from local, regional and national outlooks and value

The three major principles of environmental ethics are:

  • Principles of environmental justice wherein distributive environmental justice concerns the equal distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, whereas participatory environmental justice focuses on opportunities to participate in decision-making
  • Principle of inter-generational equality is an extension of that of equality
  • Principle of respect for nature

Along with the growth of this paradigm of universal environmental ethics, sustainable initiatives are also continuously evolving and exhibiting pathways for creation of more democratic, egalitarian and sustainable world factoring the needs of current as well as future generation.

Unfortunately while the theoretical underpinnings of environmental ethics are progressively concretizing but it is praxis which continues to show tardy progress whereby endangering not only future of mankind but also the future of all life forms on this earth. Global warming, enduring unsustainable consumptive behaviour, depletion and degradation of natural resources (including loss of biodiversity), deprivation and persisting poverty along with widening gap between developed and underdeveloped regions as well as among the wealthy and poor in a given region etc are indicators limited progress on outcomes foretelling future endangerment. Prevailing westernized thought process shaped by utilitarianism, pragmatism and logical positivism is not only limiting the evolution of radical decision making process required for addressing the global environmental problems but also blinding us from foreseeing the emerging catastrophic consequences of environmental destruction.

From the stand point of educators

  • It is important to focus on environmental status, environmental laws and regulations as well as policies to assess and arrive at specific values that might be most appropriate for environmental decision making at domestic and international domain
  • There is need to creative counter utilitarianism whose premise is that good is pleasure, pragmatism insists that all value is  instrumental (based on use, specifically, human use), and logical positivism the idea that ethical statements are arbitrary,  subjective, and irrational personal expressions of emotion
  • For the environment to be properly protected, value perspectives other than economic value perspectives must play a leading role  (Hargrove E.C., 2008)

Thus it is this existing schism between possibilities of positive change and actual accomplishment on environmental front which is glaringly high that is forcing scientific community to look towards religion and cultural domain to create and sustain changes in social, economic and environmental fronts for achieving the elusive goal of sustainable development.

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Unlocking Carbon Revenue Potential in Agriculture & Forestry Sectors in India

September 2nd, 2009

Land use, Land-use Change and Forestry (LULUCF), rural and agriculture sectors offer immense scope for cost effective reduction (e.g. by curbing deforestation) and removal (e.g. by planting trees or managing forests) of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. India being an economy that is significantly dependent on agriculture, importance of these sectors for the nation building is well understood. Project activities in these sectors can foster sustainable rural development and directly affect the lives of the poor people with opportunities for additional sources of revenue under CDM. Out of 1555 projects registered under CDM worldwide, the share of India is 414 projects as on March 31, 2009. However, its performance with respect to development of CDM projects in the LULUCF and agriculture sectors is far from satisfactory as there are only around 20 -30 projects from these sectors. This is mainly due to lack of awareness among critical stakeholders unlike grid connected electricity generation projects and industrial energy efficiency projects. Complexities involved in methodology development in LULUCF, rural and agricultural sectors, limited capacity building initiatives, high transaction costs involved in CDM projects from these sectors, non availability of institutional players capable of extending financial, managerial and technical support to take forward CDM projects are some of key factors for low level of carbon project activity in these sectors.

The global carbon market for the year 2008 has risen by 84% compared to 2007 and is valued at $ 125 billion (€92 billion). In terms of traded volume it is stated to be 4.9 giga billion tonnes of carbon. The projection for carbon market towards 2010 indicates that in a scenario wherein the private sector dominates, the global carbon market can reach around US $200 billion. Some of the key players in the carbon markets include governments (in regulated markets with targets for GHG emitting firms to reduce their emissions and also procure carbon credits to make their activities carbon neutral), compliance companies (procures CERs to offset their targets), carbon asset developers, financial institutions, carbon funds etc. Carbon funds are run by consortia of compliance companies, governments (i.e. the government purchase programmes), multilateral institutions (World Bank, European Investment Bank etc) and private investors speculating on price rises. There are a large number of voluntary carbon buyers who offset their GHG emission in the absence of compliance carbon targets.

Activities in LULUCF and agriculture sectors having potential for reduction of greenhouse gases include generation of electricity from renewable energy sources, fuel switch activities, co-generation projects, establishment of wood-lots on communal lands, reforestation of marginal area with endemic species, new large scale industrial plantations, establishment of biomass plantation for energy needs and the substitution of fossil fuel, agro forestry, rehabilitation of degraded areas through tree planting or assisted natural regeneration etc.

Given the potential, we are not witnessing many projects currently being taken forward for CDM registration due to knowledge, capacities, institutional players, lack of appropriate methodologies etc that create obstacles despite willingness of project proponents. Methodology development in rural, agriculture and forestry sector is an area that is untapped and institutions such as Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), NABARD, ICAR, NIRD, MANAGE etc in India can play significant role in this direction by bringing together research institutions as well as carbon experts together for development of new methodologies. It is seen that there is an unexplored and under exploited market for carbon projects in rural, agriculture and forestry sectors in India. The existing carbon funds either public or private sector funds have limited abilities to reach out widely due to the transaction costs involved in engaging with project participants as diverse as farmers, agricultural labourers, tribals, traders and business establishments on the one hand and also due to lack of sectoral knowledge on the other hand.

Establishing a carbon fund would have to offer novel combination of (i) equity financing for carbon projects at the development stage, and (ii) guaranteed off-take of carbon credits pre- and post-2012. By pooling carbon credits from several projects in the portfolio, the Fund has the possibility to sell larger volumes and provide delivery guarantees to buyers. Prices obtained for such value-enhanced CERs are significantly above the level for credits sold directly from stand-alone projects. By acting as a credit aggregator, the Fund can hedge project performance risks in the portfolio. Additionally, the Fund can follow different strategies for the sale of CERs. It can sell the credits in forward contracts, or take delivery and sell them on the sport market.

This fund can facilitate encouragement of rural, agricultural and forestry development projects both directly and indirectly. The fund can finance activities which could otherwise not be financed, or only be financed at higher interest rates .Fund can also act as a bundling agency by bringing small projects under single window. Agency managing the fund should first aim to gain positive experience with carbon financing by implementing a few pilot projects. To this end, it is recommended to screen existing projects with regard to their carbon potential and to identify 2-3 projects that can be implemented as stand-alone carbon transactions.

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Biomass Power Technology – The New Way Forward

August 1st, 2009

As the world is struggling to find sustainable options in generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of power, renewable sources of power especially those in a decentralised manner assume critical importance. Further, creation of positive social, economic and environmental externalities is of prime importance as it will enable such power to be generated in a sustainable manner.
In India biomass power potential is estimated to be 16,000 MW and the potential for plantation in waste lands in accounted it is estimated to be around 100,000 MW. A major thrust towards grid based biomass based power generation was initiated in 1993-94 by MNRE. Prior to that, biomass energy was one of the activities under “Bio-energy Development Programme” of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (erstwhile Ministry of Non Conventional Energy), Government of India and included activities such as briquetting, small scale biomass gasification, sterling engines etc. Various applications that are widely in use, among them the grid connected electricity generation is important one.
Biomass is expected to be the biggest contributor after wind (10,500 MW) and small hydropower (1,400 MW). The XI Plan will be a critical phase for India as it endeavours to exploit the huge biomass-based potential. As of December 2007, the ministry of new and renewable energy has estimated that around 60 biomass-based power projects were under construction in different parts of the country, with an aggregate capacity of 525 MW.

Technology Options for Biomass based Power Plants:

Combustion
The thermo chemical processes for conversion of biomass to useful products involve combustion, gasification or pyrolysis. The most commonly used route is combustion. The advantage is that the technology used is similar to that of a thermal plant based on coal, except for the boiler. The cycle used is the conventional ranking cycle with biomass being burnt in high pressure boiler to generate steam and operating a turbine with generated steam. The net power cycle efficiencies that can be achieved are about 23-25%. The exhaust of the steam turbine can either be fully condensed to produce power, or used partly or fully for another useful heating activity. The latter mode is called co-generation. In India, co-generation route also finds application mainly in industries.

The biomass residues collected will be burnt in a boiler. This heat is used to convert water into steam which will then run a turbine. This turbine in turn runs an alternator and power is produced.
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Schematic Diagram of Technology Used

Gasification

Instead of combustion, it is possible to convert the biomass into producer gas by gasification (partial combustion). Thermo-chemical gasification involves burning the biomass with insufficient air so that complete combustion doesn’t occur, but a gaseous product is obtained.  The producer gas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.  Gasifiers are classified as updraft or downdraft depending on the direction of flow of the biomass and producer gas.  India has significant experience in atmospheric gasifiers but in small scale applications rather than grid connected power. The experience across the country demonstrates that it is the combustion technology that has been widely deployed for generation of power.

The current trends in the agricultural eco-system in India exhort the need for innovative technologies that are both economical and efficient. Given this background, Government of India has initiated dialogue on promotion of such efficient gasifier technologies. Gasifiers will gain traction in the coming years that will enable small-scale grid connected power projects a reality.

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Addressing Environmental Concerns in Cotton Textile Value Chain for Enhancing Competitiveness of Indian Textile Sector

July 16th, 2009

If we analyze the global textile industry, the major determinants of competitiveness are both policy and politics in the international trade and commerce. Further, the industry performance is influenced by domestic institutional, policy, infrastructure and managerial dynamics.

In textile industry, voluntary initiatives such as Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) and Apparel Industry Initiative (AIP) are attempting to instil social and environmental standards in textile and clothing sectors. It is in this ‘buyer-driven global commodity chain’ that India has to position itself.

Based on our experience of working with the textile industry, this article is an attempt to briefly outline the environmental concerns and identify ways to enhance internal and external competitiveness of textile sector.

Like every product, clothes and other textiles products affect the environment to varying degrees throughout their life cycles, through use of chemicals, solvents and huge quantities of water. This apart, use of energy, solid waste and effluent discharge, emit dust, fumes, etc. to the atmosphere are major environmental concerns of textile industry.

Before textiles reach the consumer, they go through many different physical and chemical processes. For example they may be treated with chemicals to dye, make them more hard-wearing or wrinkle-resistant, or less flammable.

Studies have shown that some of the chemicals used in textile industry are carcinogenic and others may trigger allergic reactions. Some flame retardants that are used in certain textiles contain organic bromine compounds that are persistent (break down very slowly in the environment). Textile industry is known to use restricted chemicals such as azo dyes and formaldehyde.

Manufacturing of all variants of textiles have an impact on the environment. Usage of raw material and other natural resource inputs such as water etc have not only resource depleting impacts but release of effluents or emissions have natural resource degrading impacts. The industry is known to use large quantities of water during its processing.

For example, to grow the fiber for one cotton diaper requires 105.3 gallons of water, one T-shirt needs 256.6 gallons of water, one bath towel needs 401.4 gallons of water, a man’s dress shirt requires 414.5 gallons of water, and 987 gallons of water are required for one pair of jeans.

An average integrated textile mill produces 15 tons of finished cloth per day. It uses a total of approximately 3,840 cubic meters of water per day, including 1,680 cubic meters for finishing and processing, another 960 cubic meters for steam generation, and an equivalent volume for serving the workers colony and other domestic uses of water. The water used for finishing and processing results in contaminated liquid effluent of approximately 1,500 cubic meters per day.

In Tirupur of Tamilnadu, India, annually the textile industries alone utilize around 28.8 billion litres of ground water.

Further, usage of synthetic dyes puts environmental limitation because production of these dyes requires strong acids, alkalis, solvents, high temperatures, and heavy metal catalysts. Since production of these dyes need very toxic and hazardous chemicals.

Environmental issues can no longer be ignored by the textiles industry and the Government. Indian textile industry needs to realize that to remain competitive, operating costs have to be reduced and environmental compliance has to be enhanced. Government should not only strive to integrate environmental goals into the national textile policy but also in the plans and programmes. Textile sector cannot have independent growth strategies that are bereft of environmental concerns arising at various points of value chain because environmental costs are proving to be a drag on its own long term growth and development.

To drive home the criticality of integrating environmental concerns Tirupur industrial cluster in Tamilnadu, India is being used as illustration.

The textile industry in Tirupur was expected to achieve the targeted export of US$ 50 Billion by the year 2010. But, such growth is now greatly hampered due to immense environmental damage due to the effluents released from the textile units to caused to the Noyyal river, ground water system and agricultural fields mainly due to the textile wet processing industries in Tirupur. Textile manufacturers use energy as a raw material input to the manufacturing process or for some other purpose usually referred to as non-fuel use.

Electricity consumption is increasing in textile mills. Textile manufacturers have to deal with rising energy and other supply costs. For e.g.: Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont both raised prices on nearly everything they sell, from chemicals used in bathroom cleaners to freezer bags and kitchen counter tops, because of high raw materials costs.

Understanding the value chain of textile industry will enable identifying and addressing all sources of environmental impacts in a life cycle process. Such an integrated approach has not been undertaken in India on environmental impacts of textile manufacturing. A comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of textile manufacturing activity is a critical need of the hour and it needs to be initiated at the earliest, which includes an analysis of the degradation by air pollution, wind, water and other agents.

A complete survey of how developments in the textile industry and consumers of its products have affected the environment in the past needs to be taken up. This should also cover the most recent solutions adopted by the industry to alleviate the problems. This is important given the high textile production targets post 2005, and the ways in which the industry is responding to the environmental challenges.

Fortunately, unlike any other country in the world, India has hand-loom sector, where production is relatively environmentally benign. Thus, for Indian textile sector, the main drivers for environmentally benign growth can be:

• Growth of hand-loom sector

• Competition

• Pressure exerted down the supply chain by the consumer

• Reducing production costs

• Meeting current and anticipated legislative requirements

• Concern for the global and local environment

Professionals at GreenStratos are currently part of several initiatives in the textile sector such as promoting organic cotton and creating market linkages for handloom sector, use of environment friendly dies and promotion of energy efficiency in the textile sector.

Please reach out to us at info@greenstratos.com if you are interested in obtaining a copy of the complete article.

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