Gujarat Produces 25,000 Tonnes Of Solid Waste Daily

Gandhinagar: Government and industry need to take pro-active measures to scale up solid waste treatment to derive alternate fuel, while looking for a substitute to landfill sites. This was decided by the members of union government’s Forum for Co-processing of Hazardous and Non-Hazardous Waste at a meeting in the state capital on Monday.

The European Union (EU) has announced on October 17 that the amount of biofuels that will be required to make up the transportation energy mix by 2020 has been halved from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.

The rollback mostly affects first-generation biofuels, which are produced from food crops such as corn, sugarcane, and potato. The new policy is in place to mitigate the backfiring of switching from less-clean fossil fuels to first-generation biofuels. A study conducted in 2009-2012 by the EU found that greenhouse gas emissions were on the rise because of conversion of agricultural land for planting first-generation biofuel crops. It also became known that large quantities of carbon stock had been released into the atmosphere because of forest clearance and peatland-draining.

Biofuels made from algae, promoted by President Barack Obama as a possible way to help wean Americans off foreign oil, cannot be made now on a large scale without using unsustainable amounts of ene

District has outstripped state average in number of bio-fuel plants

Bijapur can be counted as one of the few districts in the country to have taken up the cultivation of bio-fuel plants in a big way. Some 64.7 lakh saplings of bio-fuel plants have been planted on large tracts of barren and gomala land and along farmland ridges in the district. The district hopes that the initiative will reduce its dependence on petroleum.

Investments highest in solar power followed by wind energy

New investments in renewable energy and fuels reached $257 billion worldwide last year, with India logging the sharpest surge and China attracting the largest amount at $52.2 billion, says a report. In 2010, the total global investment in renewable power and fuel was $220 billion, according to the latest report of Worldwatch Institute.

GUWAHATI: The search for alternative sources of energy is one of the main concerns of the conservationists of our times.

GUWAHATI, Oct 5 – The present day students are becoming more concerned with the growing need of the society they are living in.

Permitting ethanol production will save up huge chunk of foreign exchange spent on petroleum exports, said S. Nallasamy, pro-toddy activist and field organiser of People’s Movement of India.

He was speaking to reporters here after the ethanol campaign journey led by him reached Tiruvannamalai on Saturday. “India relies on imports for 80 per cent of its petroleum needs. By extensively replacing petroleum with ethanol, that could be produced from sugarcane and corn etc., not only the foreign exchange, we can also save our farmers and the whole economy. Some may argue that by permitting ethanol production, we may end up permitting a steep hike in the price of sugar.

The People's Movement of India will launch a nation-wide awareness campaign and take out a yatra from Coimbatore to New Delhi to urge the Central Government to promote the use of ethanol as an alternative automotive fuel.

The campaign will be launched on September 21 and the yatra will commence at 10 a.m. on the same day from the Red Cross Society premises in Coimbatore, Field organiser of the movement C. Nallasamy told newspersons here on Monday.