More investment in cleantech is needed (Business Times)

The following was published on December 5, 2012.  By Ron Mahabir

SINGAPORE SHOULD INVEST MORE HEAVILY IN CLEANTECH

AS WE speed dangerously along the highway of global economic growth, it has become awfully clear that we are headed for major accidents in food, water and other resource shortages, as well as increasing environmental disasters.

We just have had way too many red alerts in recent years including Fukushima, Gulf of Mexico, Katrina, floods and heat waves to not take these a great deal more seriously. It is probably more than coincidence that 2012 is on track to be the hottest year in the United States and Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record.

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India Looks to Africa for Oil

No surprise that India has been beaten by China for oil exploration bids in Myanmar, Kazakhstan and elsewhere over the past few years. With serious shortages and blackouts seriously affecting and threatening India’s economic growth, India is looking to Africa, South America, Pakistan, and elsewhere for new supplies.

Read article at Bloomberg

Scaling up solar in India

February 28, 2008 (Renewable Energy World) –

Moser Baer PV steps up its plans to change the way India receives electricity. 

The company, a relatively new entrant in the solar photovoltaic (PV) market, has recently announced a series of new initiatives. These include setting up India’s largest grid-connected solar farm in the sunshine abundant state of Rajasthan, and increasing production capacities.

MBPV announced that it had partnered with the Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation (RREC) to set up a solar farm of 1-5 MW capacity in the state. At US $4.5 million per MW, the total investment for this farm will be US $25 million.

Fairchild Semiconductor Selects Pune for Energy Efficiency R&D Center

February 4, 2008 (Company release) – Fairchild Semiconductor, a global supplier of high-performance products that drive energy-efficiency, has opened a design center in Pune, India. This research and design (R&D) center will be responsible for designing and developing the company’s new generation of power MOSFETs and IGBT technology to support popular applications such as solar inverters, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), automotive, lighting and ballast applications.

Choppy certified emission reductions market to hit India most

February 20, 2008 (Economic Times) – Politics and jittery equity indices are making the global carbon credit markets nervous. Carbon credit prices have plunged in the last few weeks. This could be troubling for major supplier India, which sold 20 million carbon credits in 2007, and has a larger number in the pipeline. The bad news is there is little likelihood of things settling down any time soon.

India is already in danger of getting outpriced in the global carbon credit market, with China and Vietnam offering certified emission reductions (CER) at lower, more fixed prices. The price of carbon credits, or CERs, fell to e14 last week, down from e17 in December. Though they are now at e15.50, it not certain how soon they would claw back another e2.

Lanco plans wind turbine facility in India

February 14, 2008 (Live Mint) – Infrastructure company Lanco Infratech Ltd is planning to set up one of the country’s largest wind turbines manufacturing facilities, to take advantage of shortage of wind turbines in the global and domestic markets, according to chairman Lagadapati Madhusudhan Rao. Lanco proposes to set up wind turbines facility close to Mangalore in Karnataka.

“We have tied up with a German engineering company for wind turbine technology. Currently prototyping of 2MW wind turbine is going on,” said Rao, who declined to name the German firm.

Lanco plans to set up a wind turbine manufacturing facility with an installed capacity of 500 units of 2MW turbine each a year at an investment of close to Rs500 crore, said Rao.
Work on the wind turbine manufacturing facility has been initiated and Lanco expects commercial launch of turbines sometime by September next year, added Rao.

India’s carbon market is booming

February 15, 2008 (Financial Express) – India’s carbon market is growing faster than even information technology, bio technology and BPO sectors as 850 projects with an investment of a whopping Rs 65,000 crore are in pipeline. The revenue from 200 projects is estimated at $2 billion till 2012, according to Prodipto Ghosh, member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change. Ghosh was speaking at the ‘Carbon Credit Conference: The way beyond CDM’ here on Friday.

West Bengal (India) to have grid-connected solar power plant

February 14, 208 (IANS)- State-owned Power Finance Corp Ltd (PFC) Thursday inked a memorandum of agreement (MoA) with West Bengal Green Energy Development Corp Ltd (WBGEDCL) to set up India’s first grid-connected solar power plant. The 2-MW photovoltaic plant would come up at Dishergarh Power Station Complex near Asansol in Burdwan district of southern West Bengal.

“The unit will come up over 8.3 acres of land with an investment of more than Rs.410 million. The state government will take about Rs.400 million from the PFC to execute the project,” West Bengal Power Minister Mrinal Banerjee told reporters here.

India in slow lane in drive for greener fuels

February 14, 2008 (Economic Times)- India’s failure to agree a biodiesel policy has forced firms to shelve expansions plans, putting it way behind energy-hungry rivals like China in the drive to greener fuels, a top industry representative said. The delay has also left edible oil processing companies, which have built capacity to turn 1.2 million tonnes of jatropha into biodiesel, in the lurch and $227 million poorer, said Sandeep Chaturvedi, head of the Biodiesel Association of India.

Asia’s tigers eye nuclear future

February 15, 2008 (Asia Times) – The 2005-07 spike in petroleum prices topping out at US$100 a barrel has prodded economic planners across the globe to reconsider their energy options in an age of growing concern over global warming and carbon emissions. The Southeast Asian economies, beneficiaries of an oil and gas export bonanza through the 1970s-1990s, now find themselves in an energy crunch as once-ample reserves run down and the search is on for new and cleaner energy supplies. Notably, regional leaders at the 13th ASEAN Summit in Singapore in November 2007 issued a statement promoting civilian nuclear power, alongside renewable and alternative energy sources.