Recent news​
BETTER ENERGY MANAGEMENT
July 28,2013
A group of foundries here, mainly in the micro, small and medium-scale segment, will take measures to improve energy efficiency.
The initiative is a cluster programme by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) in association with other industrial associations and government agencies.
Ayumi Fujino, UNIDO representative for India, told The Hindu here on Wednesday that the organisation has identified 12 clusters in the country in five sectors — foundries, dairy, brass, hand tools and ceramic.
In foundries, the clusters in Belgaum, Indore, and Coimbatore are identified for the four-year project.
Environment and energy are two major areas in which the UNIDO is working in the country and on the energy front, the focus is on renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Its budget for the project in the 12 clusters is $7.8 million. The industries and government agencies will also bring in funds.
Greenhouse gas-NOW AN ENERGY RESOURCE!!!
​Staff Writers Wshington, July 27,2013
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A troublesome greenhouse gas could be an energy source, say Dutch scientists describing a new method for producing electricity from carbon dioxide.
Reporting their work in the American Chemical Society's journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, they describe technology that would have CO2 react with water or other liquids and, with further processing, produce a flow of electrons that produce electric current.
Electric power-generating stations worldwide release about 12 billion tons of CO2 annually from combustion of coal, oil and natural gas, while home and commercial heating produces another 11 billion tons, Bert Hamelers of the Wetsus Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology in the Netherlands said.
The new technology could produce about 1,570 kilowatts of additional electricity annually -- about 400 times the annual electrical output of the Hoover Dam -- if used to harvest CO2 from power plants, industry and residences, Hamelers and his colleagues said.
Using CO2 from electric power plants and other smokestacks as a raw material for making electricity could create additional supplies without adding more of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, Hamelers said.
The approach, he emphasized, does not get rid of the CO2.
"You use the energy that is now wasted. You bring it in and get the extra energy out, but you cannot sequester it," he said.
Scarceonomics: Why oil sheikhs are learning how to farm
Terry Taminen, Advisor,26 July,2013
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Global population hit 7 billion well ahead of most predictions. The U.N. now forecasts that we will share the planet—and its increasingly scarce natural resources—with about 10 billion fellow humans by 2050.
Even more sobering are the numbers of people moving out from ultralow water-food-energy footprints and into the middle class in China, India, Africa and South America, setting new records for buying everything from cars and groceries to homes and lawn flamingos. Welcome to a not-too-distant future of "scarceonomics."
By now we've all read reports about fisheries collapsing; predictions that worldwide demand for freshwater will exceed supply by as much as 40 percent by 2030; and serious food shortages, with attendant price spikes, are already spreading from local to global.
Few have put these trends in context as succinctly as Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. "The geopolitics of food is fast overshadowing the geopolitics of oil," he said.
