Mumbai: Two Indian entities - Appropriate Technology Institute (AARTI), Pune and International Development Enterprises of India (IDEI) have between them secured two of the five Ashden Awards for sustainable energy - popularly known as Green Oscars - for 2006. Besides these, Vivekananda Kendra and Nardep won two second prizes.

Former chief scientific adviser to the UK government and former head of the UK Office of Science and Technology presented the award to Anand Karve of AARTI and Amitabha Sadangi, executive director of IDEI at a well-attended function at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday.

AARTI received the award - a citation and a cash award of £30,000 pounds - for designing a revolutionary biogas system that generates cooking gas from food waste and other sugary and starchy materials while IDEI was honoured for the manufacture and distribution of 510,000 treadle pumps - a simple device that uses human power to pump water from wells, streams and lakes for irrigation.

Vivekananda Kendra and Nardep bagged the second prize of 10,000 pounds for making a series of advances to biogas designs - for cooking gas generation and development of effective ways of using slurry as fertilizer.