Arctic’s whistle-blower

ENVIRONMENTAL group Greenpeace has launched a website seeking to attract whistle-blowers from within oil companies to reveal risks with drilling in the Arctic. Greenpeace wants governments to ban oil and gas firms from the fragile Arctic environment. It urged employees of oil firms and sub-contractors to submit information to the website if they knew about risks that were in the public interest.

India’s power mess

Over the past several months, the power situation in the country has reached dire straits. Media reports that blackouts lasting 10 hours a day are forcing small-scale industries to either shut down or operate partially; textile mills in Tamil Nadu and the manufacturing sector in Andhra Pradesh are examples. Operating heavy machineries for long hours on diesel is prohibitively expensive apart from being highly polluting.

Sun block

Will there be gas at the end of it?

If the United States has its way, the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline will never happen. But with Iran claiming that it has completed the construction of 900 kilometres of the 1,150 km pipeline on its territory, the first ever gas flow by pipeline into South Asia looks to be a little more than possible.

Celebrity’s anti-shale angst

An eclectic group of celebrities, including Yoko Ono, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Susan Sarandon, have come together in a music video calling for New York state to ban hydraulic fracturing.

The light bulb moment

“Lighting big common areas in apartment complexes is draining us dry, but the offer from Philips to switch from compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and tubelights (linear fluorescent tubes) to light-emitting diode (LED) lights seems good,” says Amit Jain, director general of Federation of Apartment Owners Association in Gurgaon.

Letters - March 31, 2013

Bigger is better

Energy transition is now a must

What do the people of France think of global warming? France has temperate weather, so we are not as badly hit. But there have been big storms, and floods and droughts and sometimes both. There are a few scientists who are climate skeptics but do not have much support. Interviewee:  Marie-Helene Aubert

Bon appetit with sun

Letters - March 15, 2013

A seductive mirage We at Auroville Consulting have closely followed the “crashing down” of solar prices as mentioned in the editorial, “Clouds over solar” (January 16-31, 2013), and would like to share a few observations.