A state level Rajiv Gandhi Akshay Urja Diwas was celebrated at Pushpa Gujral Science City in Kapurthala, today. About 300 students from various schools of the state participated in it. 

Director General of the Science City, Dr. R.S Khandpur in his address to the students said that India is currently the world’s fifth largest energy consumer and will move up to third place by 2030- behind only the US and China. 

Simple measures for conservation of energy can help to stall global warming. He stressed the importance of renewable energy resources.

The Haryana Government has signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with four independent power producers for setting up of five biomass power projects of 51-MW capacity with an investment of Rs 230 crore.

Out of these, two projects are likely to be commissioned soon.

While stating this at Chandigarh today, an official spokesman said the State Government had increased annual budget of Renewable Energy Department from Rs 3.9 crore in the year 2004-2005 to Rs 42.43 crore in the year 2012-13 as a part of its programme to promote renewable energy in the state.

 The United States today launched a 20 million dollar clean energy development programme in New Delhi. The objective of the programme is to help India's transition to a high performing, low emissions and energy secure economy. The programme was launched by the US Ambassador to India, Nancy J. Powell.

It will be implemented in five years and will create an environment that strengthens institutions and increases the availability of innovative financing mechanisms. The programme will also enhance local capacity to propagate clean energy solutions.

The country’s first bio-fuel outlet will be operational in Karnataka soon. Mr.Y. B. Ramakrishna, the Executive Chairman of Karnataka State Bio-fuel Development Board informed this in Bangalore today. Speaking to media persons, he informed that Bharat Petroleum will start the outlet on Hassan- Channapatna highway in about two months time. The bio-fuel park situated in Hassan will supply 300 litres of bio-fuel to the outlet everyday. The country spends 34 percent of its budget on import of crude oil. Hence he pointed out that use of bio-fuels not only saves foreign exchange but also provides revenue to our farmers. Speaking about the efforts of the board to encourage use of bio-fuels in vehicles, Mr.Ramakrishna said 2200 buses of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation are using bio-diesal at present, which will be increased to 5000 buses this year. He also disclosed that a bio-fuel production unit with a capacity of 50,000 litres has tied up with Bangalore International Airport to supply bio-fuel for ground vehicles. He said they are in talks with the Airport management to utilise the bio-fuel for the 1400 taxis run there. He informed that Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka are in forefront in production of ethanol which is blended with petrol and diesal. He said experiment is on to blend upto 20 percent of ethanol with petrol and 10 percent with diesal. Right now only five percent is blended with the fossil fuel.

Union Minister of New and Renewable Energy, Dr. Farooq Abdullah says, India is committed to increasing the share of renewable power in the electricity mix to 15 per cent by 2020(China by 16 pecent). Dr. Abdullah was addressing a gathering at the Institute of International and European Affairs, IIEA in Dublin in Ireland. He said an action plan has already been chalked out to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy with a target of around 30 giga watt, GW, of renewable power by 2017.

Stating that with a present installed capacity of over 25 GW of grid-connected power, India today stands among the top five countries of the world in terms of renewable energy capacity. He said renewable power represents about 12 per cent of total installed electricity generation capacity in India.

He said around 1.1 million Indian households are already using solar energy to meet their lighting energy needs.

Dublin

The Solar Energy Centre, SEC, of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Delhi Technological University, DTU, have signed an MoU for undertaking joint research and educational programmes in the field of renewable energy. The research and education programmes include joint thesis supervision and practical courses for M. Tech and Ph.D. students at the university. It also seeks to encourage M. Tech students opting for solar energy topics like solar thermal, concentrated solar thermal and solar cooling. The MoU was signed by Director of SEC Dr. Bibek Bandyopadhyay and Vice Chancellor of DTU Professor P B Sharma in New Delhi today.

Our correspondent reports that SEC is a research and development institution of the ministry and works on the development of solar energy technologies and practices.