Hey folks,
Energy production = big money. Power plants, coal mining, oil refineries, gas lines – everything costs bagfuls of dollars. Now we are getting to know that cleaning up trails of dirty fuel is even costlier. Recently, the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made the global community hold its collective breath when he announced the launch of the US $100-million-a year Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute in Canberra.
His country may not be ready yet to commit to emission cuts (hey, it means cutting down fossil fuel consumption, after all!), but is more than eager to offer gigantic sums to corporates who agree to adopt the technology that traps Co2 emissions and stores it underground.
Finding an alternative to carbon is not cheap either. At least that’s what experts in high tech laboratories in the West claim. If sun or wind are to contribute substantially to the world’s energy output, we need to invest billions now, they say. So are we helplessly caught in the carbon trap?
Well, even while this mind boggling money talk is on, small farmers in rural Kenya (who have no access to electricity) are opting for solar systems to power their water pumps and lighting. Its cheap, they claim. Once installed, these cost nothing, and require little maintenance.
I am confused. Are you? I suspect the entire world is.
– Pandit Gobar Ganesh
E-mail:
panditji@cseindia.org
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