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.