The theme of this years’ World Environment Day is lifestyles and an opportunity to reflect on the central issue of global environmentalism - how a continually growing economic system can fit within a finite ecological system.

For growing economies the stress has to be on patterns of natural resource use and not on the status of natural resources; that is, dealing with the causes rather than the symptoms of the problem of climate change. The time has come for rapidly growing Asia to distinguish between the global, regional and national aspects of climate policy, recognize the linkages and shape the deliberations for the new climate regime by taking substantive measures at home.

How will solar energy be made to work in India? As I discussed in my previous article there are three key challenges. One, how will the country pay for solar energy in a situation where there is no money to pay for even the crashed costs of installation. Two, what is the best model for the distribution and use of this relatively expensive energy in a country where millions still live in the dark? Three, how should India combine the twin objectives of supply of clean energy and creation of domestic manufacturing capacities?

Kerala's 10,000 Solar Rooftop Programme is already in full swing with almost half (4700) rooftops signed up by mid-January 2013. Any Keralaite with 15 square meters of unshaded rooftop area can register (http://ddr.anert.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116) to set up a 1 KW-peak system on their roof. The programme counts on each solar rooftop plant costing in total about Rs.

India’s solar power policy is now entering round two. And there is much that needs to be reviewed and reworked as the business of solar energy has seen massive turbulence in India as well as globally. In the first phase (2010 to 2013) of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) the target was to set up 1,000-2,000 MW of grid-based solar power in the country. By 2013, the country has indeed commissioned some 1,000 MW of solar power, but 700 MW of this target comes from the non-JNNSM state of Gujarat.

Every niche has its own lingo and Energy might have one of the most complicated ones around. Just as an example energy can be measured in six different ways! - Joule, Calorie, Tonne Oil Equvalent,  Watt hour, British Thermal Unit and Tonne Coal Equivalent. (For a good converter see: http://www.iea.org/stats/unit.asp ).

The Doha climate conference stretched beyond deadline but ended in what can best be described a nail-biting finish.

Indian top negotiator, R R Rashmi said yesterday at a side event we had organized on equity in climate negotiations that they could not use the word ‘equity’ in the final Durban Platform document because of the aversion to that word of a particular country. He said that they had to instead use the phrase, ‘under the convention’ meaning that future actions would be determined by the principles of the climate convention, which were based on equitably sharing of the world’s atmospheric space.

Very different global rules are needed for human wellbeing

Averting climate change does not need emission reduction pledges, timetables and a common legal framework.

Only half of the subsidy paid by the central government so far, laments the educational institute.  The system is not grid-interactive yet since there is no regulation on feeding electricity into the grid

The Radhasaomi Satsang in Dayalbagh is a spiritual center with a university campus (Dayalbagh Educational Institue), residential colonies, schools, hospitals etc. The residential colony and the Dayalbagh Educational Institute (DEI), now depend on solar energy besides conventional grid power for fulfilling their electricity needs.