kitchen wastes as a source for generating electricity

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India should come out of petro addiction
Our Corporate Bureau
01 November 2004

Chennai: The environment-unfriendly oil and gas era is slowly coming to an end as countries realise the cost, especially the political costs of petro addiction. That requires some disruptive technologies on the energy front.

Delivering the inaugural address at the 'oil and gas meet' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), M S Srinivasan, additional secretary, ministry of petroleum and natural gas, stated that during the last one year alone, oil prices had gone up by 65 per cent, affecting the GDP of developing countries.

The 'oil and gas meet' is being organised as a part of the Energy Summit 2004, organised by the CII-Sohrabji Godrej 'green business centre' on energy efficiency, at Chennai.

According to Srinivasan, the third energy wave - the first being coal and the second being oil and gas - should be diversified and renewable. "The diversification should be in source, usage as well as storage methods," he said. While a hydrogen-based energy economy could be a distinct possibility, he pointed out that storage and discharge of hydrogen was going to be a challenge. According to him, work is in progress on integrating nano-technology with hydrogen.

He also cited the adverse environmental impact created by the uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, such as greenhouse emissions and the resultant climate change. According to Srinivasan, though global warming had been taking place for the past hundred years, it had accelerated only after '80s to the extent that 15 of the 16 warmest years had occurred after the '80s.

Dr Leena Mehendale, executive director, Petroleum Conservation Research Association (PCRA), called upon the industry to look at alternative fuels, such as compressed natural gas (CNG), bio-diesel for transportation and other renewable energy sources like solar and wind energy.

She wanted the potential of utilising household kitchen wastes as a source for generating biogas to be examined seriously as Delhi alone would save diesel worth Rs5 per lakh per day by generating biogas from such wastes.

In his theme address, S V Narasimhan, chairman, 'oil and gas meet', said that the 21st century was the "century of gas", with the shift in global trends from using liquid fuels to gaseous fuels, in view of their lower emissions and sulphur content.

K Vasudevan, chairman, Energy Summit 2004 and G Jayaraman, chairman, 'national award for excellence in energy management' also addressed the gathering.