Nitin Sethi, TNN 11 December 2009, 03:08am IST
Source: TOI
COPENHAGEN: India on Thursday got all-round credit for suggesting a proposal and forging a consensus on a deal to share new green technologies.
Even as talks on the issue of financing technologies and other actions got stalled, the Indian delegation was able to forge near complete consensus on the formation of Climate Innovation Centres which would be akin to the CGIAR model created during Green Revolution to develop and share crop varieties.
The innovation centres would be a collaborative effort by all countries in terms of both funds and capacities to create new green technologies. The rights over these new technologies would be shared by all countries that contribute to the work. the CGIAR model created during the food crisis in the 1970s had led to large scale deployment of hybrid and high productivity seeds across the poor world.
Its authors — primarily the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and the power ministry — have pinned hopes on similar breakthrough on the clean tech front through the innovation centres.
While the details of the technology deal would still take a couple of days to be finally fleshed out, the talks on this front over the last four days have been the most fruitful. "We should ideally get most of the details sorted out before the high level rounds begin next week. It now seems we can at least have a deal on technology even if other things get stuck," an Indian negotiator said.
Sources said the key issue that would remain to be thrashed out towards the end would include the list of technologies that would get financial support.This issue has got stuck with negotiations on the finance issue getting completely jammed. The industrialised countries have not even been able to come up with numbers that add up to the $10 billion informally offered by them.
Worse still, sources said the negotiations have not been able to move on creating a structure and formula by which money will be collected, from whom it would be collected and which countries shall benefit from the funds.
"We expect this would be the last of the four pillars to be built up, the others being mitigation action, adaptation and technology. The issue of financing the other three pillars is obviously linked so the chances are that the size of the pot would be left to the last to be sorted out," said a G77 negotiator. He pointed out that developed countries were dragging their feet on the finance issue as they were extremely reluctant to provide public funds to poor and developing states.
Neha Lalchandani, TNN 12 December 2009, 03:29am IST
NEW DELHI: Green technology is green not just because it is environmentally friendly but could probably have a lot to do with the money involved.
As India is battling to make its hydrogen-CNG vehicles more affordable, Japan is facing similar problems with its zero-emission hydrogen cars. Priced at $1 million at present, there are only about 65 such vehicles in the Japanese and American markets - most of them are run on trial basis. Automobile companies have been given the mandate to bring the price down to about $.1 by 2015.
Fuminori Yamanashi, manager of the Nissan Research Centre's Fuel Cell Laboratory, in Delhi to participate in the ongoing Envirotech at Pragati Maidan, says that hydrogen used to fuel the cars will be converted to electricity and it is this technology that is making the vehicles very expensive. "At Nissan, we have manufactured only about 18 fuel cell vehicles, 10 of which are in Japan and the remaining are in the US. Of these, only four are on limited lease with the Japanese government using two and another being used for taxi services," he said.
Since the vehicles run on electricity, they have absolutely no emissions. The fuel cell technology uses elements of a variety of technologies including electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles and compressed natural gas vehicle technology. Pure hydrogen is pumped into the vehicle which is directed towards the fuel cell that converts it to electricity. Such vehicles do not have an engine but run on a motor powered by electricity.
The Japanese government, through the new energy and industrial technology and development organization, is funding 15 hydrogen stations across Japan and has mandated that automobile companies improve the technology to bring the prices down to one tenth of their current value. "These vehicles cannot be made commercially available right now since they are very expensive. We are targeting 2015 for mass production by which time we can hopefully bring down the prices to about $.1 million per vehicle. We hope to further reduce the prices to as low as $.02-.03 million after 2020," he added.
In India, while a consensus for an optimum blend of 18% of hydrogen and CNG has been arrived at, the greener fuel will be made available only in another two years or so. Officials say that production of hydrogen is expensive at present and that they would not be able to find a market for such expensive vehicles.
Source: India West
By SUNITA SOHRABJI indiawest.com December 08, 2009 03:06:00 PM
Biodiversity and curtailing fertility are the keys to combating climate change, said Ashok Khosla, president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Khosla is scheduled to speak at the upcoming United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18. The summit — which will draw leaders from 192 countries — is expected to yield a new climate treaty to replace the 1994 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
“My job will be to get up there and say ‘investment in nature will pay off handsomely,’” Khosla told India-West, in a telephone interview from his home in New Delhi.
Khosla is widely credited as the man who sparked Nobel laureate Al Gore’s interest in climate change.
As a Harvard teaching fellow, Khosla – the 2002 winner of the United Nations’ Sasakawa Environmental Prize – designed and taught the university’s first class on the environment, “Population, Resources and the Environment,” which Gore took during his first year there, in 1965.
At the global summit next week, IUCN will advocate for forest conservation and reforestation, along with sustainable management of wooded areas and alternatives to commercial logging.
The organization’s ecosystem-based adaptation program utilizes sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems to help people adapt to the impact of climate change.
Reforestation and smaller families are two key elements in mitigating climate change, said Khosla, adding that India is “doing a huge amount” in these two areas.
“Women do not have a say in their fertility decisions until they achieve a certain social standing,” he said, adding that creating schools for girls, and jobs for women could be two key weapons in the war against climate change. “These cost virtually nothing, yet fertility drops dramatically,” said Khosla, who also heads up Development Alternatives, which creates sustainable livelihood projects for India’s rural dwellers.
Ten to 15 percent of the world’s carbon emissions can be reduced through these two key schemes, he asserted.
The United Nations Population Fund released a report Nov. 18, which also concluded that controlling fertility was a key step in curtailing climate change.
"Helping women to make their own decisions about family size would protect their health, make their lives easier, help put their countries on a sustainable path towards development, and ensure lower greenhouse-gas emissions in the long run," said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UNFPA, as the report was released.
The UNFPA’s report stressed that climate change was most challenging for women in the developing world, who would have to work harder to secure food, water and fuel for their families as the world becomes hotter and drier.
“Given women’s significant engagement in food production in developing countries, the close connection between gender, farming and climate change deserves far more analysis than it currently receives,” stated the UNFPA in its report.
“Marginalization of and discrimination against women and the lack of attention to the ways gender inequality hampers development, health, equity and overall human well-being all undermine countries’ resilience to climate change.”
Population dynamics and reproductive health are key elements of the climate change debate, asserted the UNFPA, adding that countries must put greater funding into family planning and contraceptives.
The report cited Andhra Pradesh’s women farmers, who have tackled climate change head-on with organic, non-irrigated and pesticide-free crop plantings. Agriculture accounts for 28 percent of India’s greenhouse gas emissions, including methane emission from paddy fields and cattle, and nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizers.
In Zaheerabad, dalit women have created a system of interspersing crops which do not need extra water, chemicals or pesticides for production. In the village of Bidakanne, women use sunflowers to attract pests away from their crops, and then use legumes to fix nitrogen in the soil.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that India’s rainfall pattern will be changing disproportionately due to climate change, with intense rain occurring over fewer days, which will lead to agricultural confusion.
In the months leading up to the Copenhagen summit, India has steadfastly refused to set binding targets for reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, maintaining that doing so would hamper its economic growth. India is currently the world’s second-fastest growing economy.
But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Nov. 28 that India would consider signing on to a global treaty for emissions reductions.
His announcement came after Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of forests and environment and a vociferous opponent of legally-binding emissions reduction targets for his country, said India would consider voluntarily reducing its carbon emissions by 20 to 25 percent (see separate story).
Last December, India released its national action plan on climate change, with eight key initiatives to reduce the country’s impact.
Among the plan’s schemes is a national solar mission to harvest more solar energy; enhanced energy efficiency in industry, factories and home appliances; sustainable agriculture; and water conservation.
India’s national action plan also calls for a “Green India” program, which would reforest six million hectares in the country. More than Rs. 6,000 crore has been committed to the “Green India” initiative.
