Saturday, July 26, 2008

With Clowns Like This, is it a Wonder that Renewable Energy is Going Nowhere in India?

A senior environmental journalist in India alerted me to this article: http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1179584&pageid=0
The writer, N N Sachitanand, is supposed to be a "commentator on public affairs." With such expertise as Sachitanand professes especially as far as solar energy is concerned, I am not at all surprised that renewable energy is going nowhere.

I find it interesting that this expert is unaware of any means of harnessing solar power other than by using photovoltaics. He has no idea, from the very limited scope of his article and the nonsensical conclusions that it draws on solar power, that there is such a thing as Solar Thermal Energy and that there are large plants being set up in Nevada, Arizona, California and even in Saudi Arabia of all places. The man also cannot seem to understand that if solar powered rice cookers were used in even 20% of homes in India to cook rice for lunch every day, that would amount to huge savings in liquified propane. Solar water heaters would save electricity in homes by decent amounts as well. But then, anyone can be an "expert" these days, it seems, and journalists cannot be bothered to check up on someone's antecedents in their enthusiasm to publish something that sounds profound even if the writer has actually strung words together in the hope that they would eventually make sense.

I cannot be bothered with sending DNA India a comment - their crappy website refreshed itself thrice while I was trying to type a detailed comment in, and they most certainly have a word limit that restricts comments to praise of writers whom they commission to write these expert pieces. At the same time, pieces like this one bring to light the fact why a country that is fortunate enough to be bathed in sunlight most of the year, still cannot find a sensible way to harness the natural gift of energy that it enjoys. In a land of uneducated politicians and sundry buffoons, any so-called "expert commentator" can sound intelligent. In the end, the whole nation suffers. Tragic, at the very least, if you ask me. In fact, it is much worse than that.

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