-The Business Standard Worryingly, investment in clean energy declines  Global investment in clean energy will decline perceptibly this year for the first time in eight years, signalling an unwarranted complacency in the fight against climate change. A report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance says funding for renewable energy generation in the first three quarters of this year was $164.2 billion, down from last year’s $196.4 billion. The downturn is the steepest at...

-Business World Wind, water and the sun can help India cut dependence on coal and gas For India, energy security has never seemed more real, more urgent than now. Forty per cent of the country’s 1.2-billion populace is yet to have access to electricity. Even those getting grid supply suffer poor quality of power. Towns see power cuts more than half the day. The country’s energy deficit, according to the Central Electricity...

-Al Jazeera Treaty to ban chemicals that harmed the ozone layer came about when there was consensus between science and politics. In 1974, chemists Mario Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland published a landmark article that demonstrated the ability of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to break down the ozone layer, the atmospheric region that plays a vital role in shielding humans and other life from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation. It marked the opening salvo of...

-The Hindu Tamil Nadu’s Solar Energy Policy can go a long way in addressing the supply-demand mismatch The State’s solar initiative can draw on the strengths of its robust wind power programme Is the sun the answer to Tamil Nadu’s power crisis? With the unveiling of the Solar Energy Policy last week, Tamil Nadu joins the long list of States trying to find a way of harnessing this source of renewable energy...

-Outlook Chennai: Attempting to capitalise on 300 clear sunny days available in the state annually, Tamil Nadu government today unveiled a new solar energy policy, envisaging to produce over 3000 MW of power, exclusively from solar power, in the next three years. Christened as 'Tamil Nadu Solar Energy Policy 2012,' the new initiative of the Jayalalithaa government, with a slew of encouraging features, finds opportunity in the rapidly declining solar power costs...