Indian paper industries are now constantly working to become more eco-friendly by effective utilization of resources. In the same line, TNPL (Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd.) initiated many innovative measures to reduce energy consumption and to reduce the carbon foot print.

Energy is an essential requirement for overall development of the nation. Pulp & Paper Industry in India has complex structure of old and new plants having diversified technology with varying raw materials and producing different grades of paper. This significantly affects the energy requirement of the mills and therefore results in wide variation in energy consumption pattern.

The Union Cabinet had approved the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE). The Mission will usher in the four new initiatives to significantly scale up implementation of energy efficiency in India. The flagship of the Mission is the Perform Achieve and Trade (PAT) mechanism, which is a market-based mechanism to make improvements in energy efficiency in energy-intensive large industries (known as Designated Consumers) making them more cost-effective by certification of energy savings that could be traded.

Global concerns about climate change and declining resources mean that major companies must do their best to produce and use energy as efficiently as possible. Paper industry as a sector consume approx. 7.5-15% of the total energy consumed by the industrial sector depending upon the region & operational parameters.

The climate around the most important renewable resource-wood-is becoming increasingly rough. On the one hand, many countries are pushing the use of wood as an energy source in order to protect the climate. On the other hand, the traditional users of wood as a raw material, the timber, pulp and paper industries, complain about prices being forced up by the current run on firewood.

The upcoming global mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries should include and prioritize tropical peatlands.

Pachauri has pointed out that India has been taking steps to curb its carbon emissions. On 1 April 2010, India launched its mega-census, which aims to document biometric details of every person aged above 15 years. This mega-census will be the largest registration exercise in human history and will consume 11.63 million tonnes (mt) of paper over the next eleven months. (Correspondence)

Ecological studies of orangutans have almost exclusively focused on populations living in primary or selectively logged rainforest. The response of orangutans to severe habitat degradation remains therefore poorly understood. Most experts assume that viable populations cannot survive outside undisturbed or slightly disturbed forests.

A panel of scientists could help resolve a festering environmental dispute between Argentina and Uruguay. The controversy, over a paper-mill complex on the Uruguayan side of a shared river, has sparked years of protests.