Municipal Financing for Renewable Energy in Homes - A Model for India

With solar water heaters becoming mandatory for new apartment complexes in Bangalore and parts of Karnataka State in India and similar laws on the horizon in several states (though nothing is really likely to happen until the General Elections are over in May) there is certain to be an explosion in the demand for some attempts at solving India's chronic power shortage problem. I have been a big supporter of the Karnataka law and have also been vocal about the immense potential that this opens up for entrepreneurs who wish to come up with useful solutions that address this problem and the new regulations.

Today's New York Times has this entry on a very interesting Municipal Financing solution being offered by cities in California, the USA's most indebted state and one which has major infrastructure and other problems - just like Karnataka State where Bangalore is the capital has in India: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/science/earth/15solar.html The concept of offering municipal financing by allowing deductions in property taxes over a period of time to offset the cost of installing renewable energy systems is an excellent one. India already has laws which allow businesses to write off the cost of renewable systems to the extent of 100% depreciation in just one year and both the Central Government and several state governments waive sales taxes on these products. If an incentive in reduced property taxes were offered, this would certainly prompt existing multi-storey apartment building societies to consider installing solar heaters and reduce the amount of power consumed in the country. Entrepreneurs (and there are very few in the renewable energy field in India) would do well to carefully exploit all of these possibilities and convey them to potential clients in a marketing push. And banks could lend money to finance the purchase of these products. There is a huge market waiting to be addressed and there are massive gains for not just entrepreneurs and consumers but also to the rest of the country on reduced energy costs and on the concordant reduction in pollution that is inevitable to follow this implementation.

Hopefully, someone would push for this to be addressed, come June.

Fun Stuff: Making Your Own Toothpaste

Green Daily has this fun entry that should be useful to anyone who wishes to make their own toothpaste and avoid using chemicals that might accompany commercial toothpastes: http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/india-financial-loss-billionaires-2009-billionaires-india_slide.html After all, when you brush your teeth twice a day you may want to keep it as matural as possible. The recipe that they have is easy to make and should be well worth trying, at least.

And I have subscribed to Care2's feed on the blog for those who might want to follow them. It is an interesting site to follow especially wrt the do it yourself stuff and some of their recipes.

An Eco Baron's Fall from Grace?

The latest issue of Forbes magazine which I just received has a sobering entry about billionaires going bust. While, on the whole, the news isn't really as bad as it sounds - some of these people still have several billion left - one name caught my eye: Tulsi Tanti, the founder of Suzlon Energy. A pioneer in the wind energy business, Tanti built his company up quite fast buying REI Power in Germany and expanding his business to the far corners of the world during a period when oil prices hit record highs. Unfortunately, poor quality control seems to have led to his downfall. Last year there were already rumors about blades on his turbines cracking in Minnesota. While the Suzlon people attributed this to the blades not having been adequately tested in the kind of severe Midwestern weather that we often face, they claimed to be working on better designs and that they had offered to replace the damaged blades under warranty. It turns out that for some reason, clients in the USA are not buying this argument. A leading Californian power producer has cancelled an order for 150 turbines from Suzlon. My guess is that this would go to Clipper Wind who are based in California and who have had their own problems recently due to the recession. But what is clearly a symptom of Suzlon's sickness is a godsend fro Clipper. They do not have quality problems of any kind going by the reports available to me. And that is their salvation in these difficult times.

Forbes estimates that Tanti who was worth $ 3 billion last year is worth much less - his net worth has fallen by "at least $ 2.6 billion" according to them. My guess is that if some other company steps in at this point in time, they may be able to buy Suzlon and REI's assets for a bargain price. I also know, for certain, that a certain prominent Indian businessman's claim that he was setting up a wind energy farm on the country's West Coast in association with Suzlon is complete BS. I doubted as much when he talked to me last and I even told his managers this. Well, if he reads this blog as I suspect he does from time to time, he knows that I know about his "project."

That apart, I will be looking harder for a large turbine for a friend who has a hilltop property near a large Indian city and who has been thinking about putting up a large turbine there. Luckily for him, there is a power station belonging to the state government right below the hill. When some businesses fail, I guess others have opportunities to work on and succeed. When it comes to green business, I do hope that the successes are vastly more than the failures and that Suzlon's failure is forgotten when other companies begin to shine. And, finally, I do hope that Suzlon manage to pull back from the brink.

PS A link to Indian billionaires who have dropped in net worth to a considerable extent is accessible at this link: http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/india-financial-loss-billionaires-2009-billionaires-india_slide.html

Tanti figures prominently in the list.

Video Reviews of Electric Trucks on Autoblog Green

Again a very interesting concept that should be dynamite on Indian roads - if the country could generate electricity without 8 hours of power cuts a day, that is. Autoblog Green has this series of expert video comments and a review in progress of Smith Truck's Newton, a new electric truck design that is being tested right here in Chicago. I shall keep an eye open for these trucks and all I can say is that Tata, Ashok Leyland or one of the van manufacturers in India needs to seriously look at making one of these.

Check out the Autoblog Green link at: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/03/13/video-smith-electric-trucks-get-pro-reviews-at-work-truck-show/

Smith Electric Vehicles have a website that is equally interesting at: http://www.sev-us.com/default.html

Why India Cannot Really Move Forward on Anything

While this is not directly related to an environmental issue, it has everything to do with why India cannot seem to progress on any front - the environment included. Many years ago when I was a boy, the ambition of anyone who was a few years older than I was was to get a "government job." The average Indian could not think any further than becoming a bureaucrat. Those were the years when Indira Gandhi ruled, followed, as I gew older, by her equally thuggish son Rajiv. The Indian state could do little more than carry out the Gandhis' diktats and continuously hammer the average Indian in every way possible. Corruption was one of the most prominent ways among these - you still cannot get ANYTHING done with an Indian government office without paying a bribe. But this is, again, off topic in the light of today's post.

Considering the number of new environment friendly power generation and green building technologies that are available today, has anyone paused to wonder why no one - yes, not a single Indian business - has even bothered to do something to bring some of these technologies to a country that always gloats when it is referred to as a "technology powerhouse?" The answer may be in Sramana Mitra's piece in Forbes at this link: http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/26/india-angel-investors-technology-enterprise-tech_india.html?partner=technology_newsletter

Indians seem to make good servants but lousy entrepreneurs. Let's face the facts here - when students from the Indian Institutes of Technology, considered India's answer to MIT etc, do not want to do anything more than get a job, there can be little hope that anything would go ahead to lead the country into a pioneering direction. If this sounds harsh, it is not what I am saying myself. There is, sadly, a lot of evidence that this is absolutely true. The occasional small piece of good news that comes out is nothing much. What is glaring is the amount of wasted potential in a country that produces more engineers in every single year than the USA, the world's most technologically advanced nation, produces graduates.

The Tragedy of Contaminated Water-Bodies in India

I have been corresponding with a Local Government Advisor Dr Mayraj Fahim for some time on issues facing people in South Asia and especially on issues in India where she works with civic groups in the city of Bangalore. It was coincidental, then, that I received a very interesting (albeit sad) set of links from her about poor water quality in India just as the Times of India carried a sensational scoop on the fecal content in Indian "mineral water." The Times link is at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Ahmedabad/Shit-in-water-AMC-BIS-gear-up-for-cleaning-act/articleshow/4248188.cms

The link that Dr Fahim sent me is even more embarassing: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=exclusive&sid=aErNiP_V4RLc To quote some of the unfortunate statistics: open defacation and animal waste has soiled 75% of India's water sources. And 100,000 tons of human excrement are left each day in fields on vegetables that Indians later come to consume. Quite literally, Indians are eating sh1t. A separate link that she has sent me shows how dire the situation is for India's children who are malnourished in the extreme: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-tops-world-hunger-chart/articleshow/4197047.cms

I find it difficult to believe that in a country that has not used more than In Rs 78,000 crores of foreign aid as I have posted earlier, the money was not used to make use of this excrement - IT IS A RESOURCE. This human and animal waste can be used to generate Methane which would work as a fuel and substitute India's oil imports to a significant extent. The remaining slurry could be processed into fertilizer. The processing of this resource could generate jobs. This would reduce unemployment and increase prosperity. Need I go on? Before I am accused of emulating a scratched record, let me confess that the best thing that could happen would be for me to close this blog down because matters improve so much that there is no need for it. Sadly, knowing how things work in the country of my birth, it is going to be a long time before anything changes for the better - if it ever does. As my good friend Mohanakrishnan has pointed out in his response to the post preceding this one, little ever changes for the better. Even attempts at doing something positive in a small way come to nought because one government starts something and its successors decide that whatever was done earlier makes no sense. Tragic, yes, and that is India.

NYT Article on Renewable Energy Has Important Lessons for India

I enjoy reading articles on renewable Energy in the mainstream media as I pointed out last night. These are often hard nosed evaluations of the technologies etc that activists try to promote and the result is a balanced one to say the least compared to the sometimes shrill promotions that some blogs come up with. Here, again, I must insist that not all blogs are at fault but the "Obama is God" attitude of some of the more prominent ones makes me, an old skeptic, want to retch.

But this is not about politics - this blog is a look at Renewable Energy from my inexpert understanding of the subject. And that is why this piece from today's New York Times is particularly interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/opinion/07bowles.html The author of this opinion piece is the secretary for energy and environmental affairs for the state of Massachussetts. As a state that is home to some of the top technical universities in this country, he has a strong list of sources to draw his information from and a pool of experts to consult in drawing up his conclusions. And a reading of the piece suggests how simple and sophisticated his ideas are - love or hate the Times as you may, this piece is impressive and practical.

Which brings me to its value for a third world nation with a major energy problem like India. India is surrounded by the sea because it is a peninsula. The opportunity here - you can have combined wave and tidal power stations all around the coast. The country is bathed in sunlight. The opportunity - rooftop and large solar thermal powerplant possibilities right across the country. Just imagine the overall potential - there is so much that India has and hardly any of this is being used. Historically, the country was called "Vasundhara" because it was believed that it could provide everything that anyone ever needed. This is why, beginning with Cyrus the Great and the Persians who invaded in the distant past right down to the British, all kinds of people wanted to make India the jewel in their crown. Sadly, today's Indians, and Indian politicians in particular, have no such pride in their own country. If they did, they would tap the abundant energy that the country is blessed with.