THE price of a cup of coffee. That's one estimate of what it will cost each American every day for the next 20 years to break the fossil fuel habit of generations and turn to renewables instead. A daily outlay of a shade under a couple of dollars does add up to trillions over the decades, but is it really that much to ask? (Editorial)

At first glance, geothermal energy seems almost too good to be true. It's clean, inexhaustible, provides predictable 24-hour power and you can get it just about anywhere. There is a snag, however. Outside of geologically blessed places like Iceland, Japan and New Zealand, where volcanically active rocks are close to the surface, the Earth's heat is locked away under several kilometres of rock.

When the European Parliament

Wave power generation cum shore protection project envisages tapping the energy of ocean waves and wind for the generation of electricity and integrating it with the national power grid. A number of impellors are arranged parallel to the shore for a span of 500 m at a distance of about 100 m from the seashore. Impellers are designed to tap the trienergies of ocean waves.

With the average price of a gallon of gasoline hovering somewhere around $4 in the U.S. and oil prices continuing to rise the whole world is refocusing their attention on the viability of alternative energy sources. A window seems to be opening for genuine progress in lessening our dependence on fossil fuels.

The Ladakh Ecological Development Group or LEDeG for short is an NGO (non-governmental organization), which came into being in 1983, and has been actively involved in awareness generation programmes related to the environment and sustainable development. LEDeG is a firm believer in being a real practitioner of alternate energy technologies like solar PV (photovoltaic).

Wind energy continues to be the dominant source of renewable power in India. About 8000 MW of wind power capacity has been installed in the country so far. As against this, the share of solar power is abysmally low mainly due to its high initial capital cost and thus, a higher cost of per unit power generation.