More Positive News from India: Kolkata Buses Run on Biodiesel Blend

Treehugger has this very interesting entry on Kolkata Trams running on a biodiesel blend in an attempt at reducing bus generated pollution in the city by about a third: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/calcutta-tramways-buses-make-switch-biodiesel-blend.php

Hat's off to the Indian Railways who also own the Kolkata Tramways Corporation for this feat. Indian Railways already use some quantities of biodiesel and I hope they go from strength to greater strength. Now, will other cities across the country please take note?

This Should Work in India and Very Well at That

There was an attempt at getting India to convert to biomethane when I was a boy many decades ago - the Indian government called biomethane "Gobar Gas" after the name for cow dung in Hindi. Somehow, the whole project didn;t take off at all and the whole business died. India, as many know, has the world's largest cow population. The problem, from the perspective of caring for the cows in a country where they are worshipped is concerned, is that Indian cow breeds do not produce anywhere near as much milk as western breeds produce. Historically, bullock-carts (as oxcarts are called in India) were a popular mode of transportation in India with Arnold Toynbee writing in the 1950s that the total number of these vehicles in India exceeded the total number of cars in the rest of the world. But this was not to be as "progress" turned India's cities into urban ghettos stinking of untreated sewage and diesel exhaust fumes.

As the title suggests, there is a very interesting on Autoblog Green (Click on the title to go there) about using biomethane to run trucks that would normally run on diesel. India has a number of diesel vehicles and diesel gensets in factories etc. The country also has charitable Pinjrapols which are retirement centers for cows which are fed and cared for daily with donations. Well, now, there is an opportunity to get rewarded for this care that some give these cows - Cummins and the other companies involved in this Autoblog Green entry are already present in India. So, how about getting them to reconfigure diesel engines, gensets etc that they already sell in India to run on biomethane? And, who is going to look at this as an opportunity to make money from? I hope to send a link to this post to several friends who are keen animal livers and also business people as well as to my former classmates at St Mary's, Sherwood Hall, the Madras Christian College etc and to the Blue Cross of India, the organization that gave me Jack, my best buddy in the world.

Here's to hoping that someone in India, somewhere, gets bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and makes billions out of this idea.