Khaleej Times: Abu Dhabi targets 90% waste recycling by 2018

Ironically, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East also offer the greatest potential for using Renewable Energy - an abundance of solar power makes them ideal locations for solar thermal power, solar photovoltaics and for the use of solar water heaters and airconditioning systems. The cities which are closely packed also offer fantastic opportunities for recycling waste - which is where this proposal to recycle 90% of he waste in Abu Dhabi becomes interesting.

This is going to be a development that I shall watch. I am guessing that the plan will work as follows:

1. Plastic bottles, aluminum cans and recyclable food and grocery packaging will end up being collected in recyclable trash bins and shipped to India and Pakistan where huge industries exist in reprocessing these materials

2. Ditto for paper - I am aware of paper being shipped to India and Pakistan from the UAE already. My guess is that the paper collection activity will be streamlined and made more efficient

3. Used engine oil will be collected more carefully. India used to be a major center for processing used engine oil, but the Government of India banned this after a poisoning incident where some crooks mixed it with cooking oil and ended up blinding and killing people in India in the 1980s. However, with the sharply increasing price of engine oils, I can foresee used engine oil getting reprocessed once more

I have questions about the processing of sewage and food waste, however. I am not sure if the food waste would be composted or if it would continue to be buried. And whether the sewage would be processed into fertilizer or just burned. Sewage also offers the opportunity to extract methane for use as a fuel. There are advanced technologies available that would help here - at least two US companies, one in Texas and the other in California offer technologies to process food waste and sewage into gasoline and jet fuel. Some of this is currently being bought by the US Air Force from the company in Texas, and the Californian company has a project in Japan as well as one in San Francisco. Perhaps, the UAE will consider inviting these companies to use their technologies in Abu Dhabi. Who knows - this may even increase the amount of waste processed to over 90%.

Here's wishing the UAE well!

India Hits Back Over Western Demands That it Cut its Emissions

It was bound to happen - constant harangues on several talk radio shows and on Fox television against India and China on emissions were expected to bring a tit for tat statement and here it is: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/5977599/India-attacks-British-and-Western-hypocrites-over-cutting-emissions.html As someone who lived just overlooking the Vadapalani Bus Terminus at Gowri Chitra Gardens, I have a somewhat different take on this, however. Let us not kid ourselves - India's air is filthy. And if a "better lifestyle" is what India is aspiring to, then that should include cleaner air and water. It does not make sense if Indians can buy Rolls Royces or Bentleys and if they have to breathe in filth the moment they step out of them and no longer have air filtered through carbon filters available to them. There is also the matter of health, and when I last checked, that was also a lifestyle issue - recent reports suggest that as many as 70% of Kolkata residents may have lung infections of some kind. The percentages in other cities should be similar.

While this is not going to be easy under any circumstances, I do think that India would be able to do both - work towards implementing more Renewable Energy projects (especially solar power) and advance towards a better lifestyle for Indians at the same time. Fossil fuel resources are currently held by a few nations that have been fortunate to have them located on their territory. And these are running out. Countries like India have access to abundant sunlight and they need to focus on this as a resource and develop a model that works in this context. It is not an impossible task. Some positive steps are being taken in this direction, no doubt. I wish that there would be more, and that they would be taken faster.

Let us not forget that a full 50% of all the money that India earns goes towards paying for fuel. All of this could, technically, be available for other "lifestyle" projects if it were not sent out of the country to pay for coal and crude oil.

Electric Airplane Sets Speed Record

Yes, there are road cars that can go faster than this airplane and for longer. But this is an achievement that is absolutely on the right path ahead: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/06/15/new-electric-airplane-sets-world-record-for-speed-w-video/ Autoblog Green Must be thanked for giving this achievement publicity.

The world's car manufacturers are making decent strides (albeit sometimes reluctantly) as far as fuel efficiency is concerned. But aircraft and watercraft have been a different cup of tea so far. All work in these areas has been on a small scale and laws pishing these companies to do something significant have been few. That said, airlines like Emirates, Japan Air Lines and Air India have done some work in reducing the amount of fuel burned in take offs and landing by tinkering with time schedules and similar. However, it is only technological breakthroughs in electric aircraft power that will help reduce the use of fossil fuels in the air significantly. That said, algae based fuels have been successfully tested by the Japanese as well as by the US Air Force, though, there again, carbon is emitted into the air. My hat's off to the Sky Spark team. Their website is: http://www.skyspark.eu/web/eng/index.php

India's Water Mess - A Sign of the Disaster in the Making as Chhatisgarh Farmers Commit Mass Suicide

I am grateful to Dr Mayraj Fahim for the main article here as well as other pieces referenced later on in this post. This blog is about Renewable Energy but I have focused on grain storage and water conservation in the past - indeed, my interest in water conservation is one of the reasons why I personally believe that wind energy is an important way forward as far as energy is concerned. Wind turbines do not need water for cooling, making them a superb way of generating electricity in a clean manner and without using water which is already a scarce resource in several parts of India. Ask me - I grew up in Madras and while I lived with my parents at the government owned Old Tower Block, I never had to worry about water. The government keeps its own happy. The hassles came when I got married and left home - the only reason why we had water on a daily basis at Gowri Chitra Gardens where my wife and I lived before we came to the USA is that the building implemented rain water harvesting long before it became fashionable. On the flip side, in the poor state of Chhatisgarh, several farmers have committed suicide because they have run out of ground water as this article shows: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/1500-farmers-commit-mass-suicide-in-india-1669018.html This is news that you will not see in the Indian newspapers. They are too busy lying about how great life is in India. What are some dead poor farmers in Chhatisgarh when there is India Fashion Week waiting to be covered in Mumbai, with a dinner with some nubile models thrown in?

I have also talked about the fraud being committed in India not going in for a modern grain storage system both on this blog as well as in articles in the Indian media. NABARD has had over $ 200 million in funding available from Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau and the Swiss Development Corporation for non-farm sector loans for over 20 years as far as I know. I had arranged for an expert to talk to the Ministry for Agriculture in New Delhi when the current government had just been elected five years ago on this subject, without pushing any particular company or agenda. They took the information that I had arranged and did nothing. That is the Indian way - farmers commit suicide when they are in debt and pests eat three times the amount of grain that people do in India. The poor die of starvation but the Ministry of Agriculture will not implement an old plan of setting up co-operatives to run grain storage businesses and rent them to the FCI with shares given to farmers so that they have an income during lean times, and the silos actually save tens of thousands of grain. What was it about Nero playing the harp while Rome burned? India has thousands of Neros working simultaneously and in co-operation while Indians die of starvation. This country is a basket case. Make no bones about it. The following links show you exactly why:

1. http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/04/indias-green-revolution-heading-for.html India's Green Revolution is Heading for Collapse

2. http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/04/usdas-india-estimates-are-bogus.html A US blogger explains why the USDA's India estimates for a 2009 wheat crop are bogus

3. http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/04/india-will-be-importing-millions-of.html This is what happens when wheat crops fail - the country is forced to import wheat. And more farmers will commit suicide . . .

Air India Follows Emirates in Saving Fuel

After a dispute with Air India (where the consumer courts ruled in my favor) many years ago, I swore never to use that airline and I am convinced thhat I did the right thing. Recently, when my mother in law visited Chicago, I told the jokers at their counter that I never traveled in their miserable apology of an airline and that I never would. My mother in law is a masochist - no one who isn't one, would want to spend their own money to travel on this airline, in my opinion. But then, as my late grandmother used to say, you could find something useful even in a dead snake if you tried. Treehugger has this post about Air India saving fuel: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/air-india-fuel-efficiency-efforts-save-9-million-dollars-in-six-months.php

Considering that the jokers who run this Indian public sector farce have been living on handouts from the Central Government for decades, this must be one way the management is trying to keep this airline afloat. I guess, from the viewpoint of this blog, it saves fossil fuel from being burned and polluting the atmosphere - Air India have to be acknowledged for showing fossil fuel the fist. That said, Emirates, probably the best international airline these days, have a much bigger program than Air India's and they were there even earlier. With considerably more planes than Air India can even dream about buying, they do a much bigger job of saving fuel.