Subsidising Nature and Taxing Infrastructure

After taking substantive decisions on India’s energy capacity targets the government is moving steadily towards greater use of biofuels. GST on ethanol has been lowered from 18 to 5 percent. While supply and investment in ethanol are being incentivized thus, demand is set to increase steadily as India moves towards greater mixing of ethanol with petrol. The public sector is getting into the investment bandwagon bigtime with GAIL announcing a Rs 1000 crore bioethanol unit.

It is tough to convince people to pay up even for items such as provident funds. So how can we convince them to pay more for environmental improvement? If you ask anyone whether more needs to be paid for the environment, most would agree. However, ask them to voluntarily do so, and most will abstain. Experience with provident fund payment might show a way ahead. Why not simply announce a payment schedule that kicks in only in the future? A neat article on the practicalities of implementing sustainability enhancing economic solutions.

It is now quite certain that solar power units do damage the ecology significantly, and also suffer from various risks. For instance, weather and cloud cover can reduce their productivity. Therefore we need to find technology solutions. One such solution does not seem as far-fetched anymore. Solar farms in space that microwave the energy collected back to Earth!

Construction causes much damage, is costly, uses up a lot of concrete that adds to global warming, and will only increase its footprint in countries such as India. A new technology promises to use up to 70 percent less concrete and needs no reinforcement or binders. The Striatus bridge uses 3D printing to create hollow blocks that are held in place solely through compression. The ‘lack of any metal or adhesives to reinforce the bridge means that the bridge can be easily disassembled and reused’ and even recycled!

This does appear too good to be true. Ashwin Shankar a Stanford-educated Pune-based entrepreneur and his team have developed a mechanism that allows for 2-minute recharging of (currently) 2 wheeler batteries of any standard and specs. He played it smart and instead of forcing his specs on potential customers the recharging infrastructure is designed in such a way that it can be tweaked to any fleet operator’s battery specs. India’s start-up scene is finally delivering for the environment.

The Delhi Metro is attempting to run a double-decker service on one of its routes to double capacity at little cost. Some believe this project is poorly designed and could create serious problems. Public sector engineers and managers are constantly under pressure to deliver quick results, but an independent technology regulator is required in the infrastructure space to ensure that quick decisions don’t lead to poor outcomes. For the time being the Delhi HC has dismissed the petition against the project.