Pakistan Decides to Focus on Solar Power

As a habit, I usually read all major newspapers in South Asia and today's edition of "The News" has this very encouraging editorial about a new official policy in Pakistan in looking at solar power: http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=156598 With much the same weather conditions that India faces, Pakistan is as ideally suited to harnessing the power of the sun as India is and it is good to see the country take this step. From the newspapers I know that Pakistani cities have the same problem of load shedding that Indian cities have - it is obvious that they have chosen to take a more practical approach to managing their power problems than India has, as a matter of public policy. I must wish them the best and hope that in the spirit of positive competitiveness, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and other nations in the SAARC region follow this example.

I shall follow this development and blog about it.

A Huge Opportunity in Cleaning Up Electronic Waste

Go on Google and type in "electronic waste" and one of the options that it offers is "electronic waste and India." The reason for this, of course, is familiar to anyone who reads the newspapers or watches television - third world countries like India have become dumping grounds for electronic waste of all kinds. The problems that electronic waste causes are many - there are numbers of toxic metals that are involved in addition to plastics which are also a problem. SOme estimates from the USA suggest that electronic waste accounts of 40% of the lead and 75% of the heavy metals found in landfills. Of course, there are fears of this leaching into ground water and of it contaminating the soil around the landfills.

But, where there are problems, there are always opportunities. A section of scientists and engineers have come to regard these landfills not as waste disposal sites but as "mines" from which metals that have value may be extracted. Look at it this way - the older 286 and 396 computers have huge amounts of gold and silver in them. So do a lot of older electronic products. At the moment, metal prices, like all commodity prices, are down because of the current global recession. But they will soon be up again and the requirement for these metals is not going away anytime soon. That leaves a huge opportunity in recycling electronic waste. A collection system that takes care of new waste is one part of this. A "mining' effort that recovers e-waste from landfills is another.

Some companies are jumping in on extracting this waste and separating it for processors to take and separate. And advanced businesses like Umicore in Belgium http://www.umicore.com/ are at the forefront of processing the metals recovered, separating them and offering them in pure form for reuse in industry. From some brief interaction with Umicore in the past, I know that the Chinese and the Japanese send them e-waste for reprocessing all the time. I was personally responsible for introducing one Japanese trader to Umicore. But, no Indian company really bothers to do anything in this area, unfortunately. I knew that CMC (now a part of the Tata empire) had a number of old mainframes at one time and that they were losing money paying for warehousing space to hold this junk in India. When I approached them at the time asking if they would sell any of these to me for scrap value, there was no response at all. Hopefully, with the recession and the corresponding need for them to make more money as revenues from software and services dries up, Indian companies would look at this potentially lucrative business. Mark my words - there's gold in that junk.

An Indian Manufacturer Brings Out Electric Scooters

A friend who does not want to be identified sent me this link to an Indian manufacturer of electric scooters: http://www.ekovehicle.com/ The company is located in the technology capital of Bengaluru (better known as Bangalore) and offers its scooters in a few states of the country. I did think that their location in Bengaluru was wholly appropriate because that once beautiful city has become one of the most horrendously polluted places in India. I have watched this deterioration over four decades and never failed to be horrified at this deliberate and gradual destruction of a once amazingly beautiful city.

Bengaluru's pollution comes from its unusually high number of two wheelers - one of the highest per capita two wheeler populations in the country, and most of them older vehicles with two stroke engines. If this new product is good and if the scooters sell well, they would reduce the pollution considerably. I can see two problems, though - Bengaluru's perennial power supply problem and the less than glamorous image of scooters in India compared to motorcycles. Unfortunately, the new image of environment-friendly products being glamorous as in the west has not reached India yet. That said, on a more positive note, Western trends usually reach India quickly. I hope that this takes off. If Eko Vehicles make good products, they deserve to succeed and wildly at that.

Best wishes to them!

Heirloom Foods and The Third World

It was some sad news today that prompted this post - a very good, old friend whom I had not met in years was diagnosed with a life threatening condition. Unfortunately, these past five years, we have been quite close to each other physically speaking and I had driven past his home-town several times at my previous job before I joined university full time. As we spoke about our time at university some twenty five years ago, the one thing I could not forget was the delicious meals that his mother would cook for us whenever we visited his place. It was a curious time in India's history - "modern" style agriculture was beginning to come in and the old ways were ending. But his mother belonged to the old school and she would ask us to go to the local market and buy "nattu" or "country" vegetables, specifically tomatoes, instead of the hybrid and later genetically modified modern or city vegetables that were becoming popular. The country tomatoes were old strains brought to India by the Portuguese some five hundred years earlier from the new world along with green chillies and both had become integral parts of the Indian diet. These were small things and they would look puny and more structured with a shape like the inside of a peeled orange beside the larger and round, almost shapeless new tomatoes that were coming in to the country, grown from industrially produced seeds sold by both domestic seed suppliers and also by multinationals. Their taste was something that you didn't know until you actually started using them. Every batch was a different taste and a part of my friend's mother's skill lay in how she would match the taste of a particular batch to whatever she was cooking. The newer, industrial tomaotes, of course, were consistent in their taste. You could pick a kilo up and read a recipe out of a textbook and cook whatever you wanted to without worrying about anything other than following instructions.

Wel, it turns out that these days, there is a new craze: heirloom gardening. Quite simply, this is the growing of old fashioned, natural foods and flowers for personal consumption. People who cannot find vegetables and flowers of the kind that they enjoyed in the pre-industrial farming era now grow them themselves. But the movement is forcing some small farmers to look at growing these plants and supplying them through stores as well. Right now, these vegetables and flowers are expensive because small farms do not get the kind of agricultural subsidies that alrge ones do. As this movement continues, I do think that the authorities will have to take notice and support this kind of cooking. I also think that there would soon be good budget restaurants selling heirloom foods to people who would like to try that kind of thing. The Chipotle chain already has plans to power all of is restaurants with wind and they use non-genetically modified foods throughout their menus. I do think that this is a movement that will move ahead in the USA at least as more and more people get fed up with the junk that you get in the stores as well as in all but some boutique restaurants.

Which brings me to the third world - there are still many heirloom foods being grown and heirloom flowers being sold in India, the country that I am most familiar with. This despite the assault on these traditional farming practices that have inevitably come in thanks to "modernization." I haven't been to India in a long time. I hope that when I do visit next, I still get to eat some heirloom foods. Indian food is an obsession with me - I do trace my personal ancestry back quite back in that part of the world after all, and cannot escape what is an Indian obsession. That said, I did see the beginnings of junk food coming into India with the major western chains setting up there. I hope they never overtake the traditional food that is available in that part of the world, or indeed, anywhere else.

For anyone interested, I would just suggest doing a Google search on "Heirloom Foods" or "Heirloom Gardening." You will get swept away with the wealth of information that is available. Do take the effort - good food is too important to ignore.

Bon Appetit!

Small Wind Turbines Cut Electricity Consumption on NYC Apartment Building in Half - Will India Follow This Example?

Treehugger has this VERY interesting piece about ten small wind turbines cutting the power consumption in a five storey New York apartment building in half: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/small-scale-wind-turbines-cut-apartment-building-electricity-bill-in-half.php Now New York homes, like homes across the USA, use considerably more energy than homes in India do. Without any specifics in hand, I would venture that a similar exercise could make an Indian apartment building vastly more energy self-sufficient than a home in New York, for example.

NDTV had this piece some time ago about Chennai, my former hometown in India, turning into a "world class city" with plans to build ever higher buildings: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hdGu0C6ghFs With the horrendous power shortages that the city faces at the moment and the very pleasant phenomenon that old Madrasis (yes, I prefer the old name Madras to Chennai anyday) can't stop talking about, the lovely sea breeze that defines what is best about this old city, I wonder how difficult it would be for the city authorities to write this into their code and make wind turbines and solar roofs mandatory? The terrible pollution that the city suffers would also be reduced if this were properly done. Now, how do I get this message across to the government, ha, ha!

A New Dutch Diesel Motorcycle

I must admit to a weakness for motorcycles of whatever kind - including the fossil fuel variety - though, of course, I do believe that electric motorcycles should be the way of the future. This is why this new offering of a diesel engined two wheel drive motorcycle by a Dutch company sounds very interesting to me: http://www.gizmag.com/the-2wd-track-diesel-motorcycle-with-cvt/10636/ For the kind of power and performance that it offers, it should be as fuel efficient as an Enfield Bullet if not better at regular speeds, and, of course, vastly better behaved and capable on the roads. What underlines the bike's "renewable energy" credentials is the fact that it can be ridden on bio-diesel or pure vegetable oil. I'm not sure how really clean either of those options are and I won't even try to go into that. What I will do is check up on this and post back in the future.

Gizmag also has a feature on an LPG driven bike at: http://www.gizmag.com/meet-the-greenfly-the-worlds-first-lpg-motorcycle/10414/ While there have been some dangerous experiments in India with mounting LPG cylinders on scooters and motorcycles, this tech couldbe a really good idea if some Indian motorcycle manufacturer wants to take it up.

Good opportunities, then, for someone who wants to use them. Will someone do this? Here's keeping my fingers crossed.

As China Plans the World's Biggest Solar Project, Indians Stand and Gape

EcoGeek has this piece about the Chinese planning a 1 GW Solar Photovoltaic project combining thin film and silicon cells: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2420/83/ This is, by far, the biggest project of its kind in the world and twice the size of the next sized one planned for San Luis Obispo in California. And what is India doing? Check the IL&FS website and the Delhi Dunderheads are out tendering for an extension to the Neyveli Coal Fired Powerplant. You might think that Tamil Nadu does not receive any sunlight at all and that it is possibly something like the dark side of the moon if you give the Indian establishment any credit for common sense. The problem is that the imbeciles do not have the slightest clue of what to do to wean themselves from the vampire-like hold that the Middle East and the world's coal producers like Indonesia, Australia and China have on them. It is almost as if the Indian establishment would rather see itself bleed to death and voluntarily at the hands of those who supply it fossil fuels to satisfy the nation's addiction to them. It is also as if the smell that defines Indian cities these days - the smell of rotting sewerage and untreated vehicle exhausts - is as addictive to the Indian planners as the smell of a drug is to an addict who smokes it.

Once again, the Indians are certain to be left looking like jokers while the Chinese power ahead. The tragedy is that this is going to happen even as India has the world's finest engineers, people more than capable of doing what the Chinese are doing - and then some.