UDAY is meant for financial and operational turnaround of discoms.
Hopelessly uneconomic on any substantial scale, since it requires a conventional power back-up for when the wind stops blowing, forests of wind turbines are rightly regarded in most countries as an environmental monstrosity.
We have to get our states to adopt what are called "renewable portfolio standards" pledging to use a lot of renewable energy by 2015 or 2020. We have to work with businesses and shops to get them engaged in the same way.
Cutting carbon in the supply chain is the next critical stage in the business contribution to reduce carbon emissions to tackle climate change and, represents a significant commercial opportunity.
Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007 - and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.
With a giant battery, we'd be able to address the problem of intermittency that prevents wind and solar from contributing to the grid in the same way that coal and gas and nuclear do today.
I believe we are deluded about alternative energy. The key is, whatever we do, we're going to have to do on a very modest scale. It's all about scale. We're not going to build giant wind farms with Godzilla-sized turbines all over the place. That's a fantasy.
At the end of the day, natural-gas peakers sit back there and get financed so that the Midwest corridor can have a huge [period] of four to five days of no wind. The peakers are running big time to make that up, because that is the swing piece that can always be turned on.
All new schools...should be models for sustainable development: showing every child in the classroom and the playground how smart building and energy use can help tackle global warming...Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power.
As far as discom reforms are concerned, they have to be a combination of two parts. One is the existing balance sheet and, therefore, taking care of that. The second important is the reduction in losses going forward.
A new, self-employed architect scientist is the one in all the world who may accelerate realization of a high-standard survival for all, as now completely practical within the scope of available technology.
