UN's top environment official, Ramesh differ on benefits of nuclear energy
There was a minor chit chat between UN environment chief Achim Steiner and Environment minister Jairam Ramesh over the issue as India debate pros and cons of nuclear energy following people’s protest against world’s largest nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.
There was a minor chit chat between UN environment chief Achim Steiner and Environment minister Jairam Ramesh over the issue as India debate pros and cons of nuclear energy following people’s protest against world’s largest nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.
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Steiner, who is executive director of United Nations Executive Programme, did not list nuclear as a green energy and said the cost of its production increases with time unlike other renewable such as solar or wind, which comes down.
Ramesh was quick to hit back by saying India cannot meet its energy needs by generating energy from cow-dung or by ox energy. “We need all. Coal, Nuclear and Hydro plus renewables,” the minister, who on earlier occasions has described nuclear as green energy source, said.
At a function to launch of World Environment Day to be celebrated on June 5, he refrained from defining nuclear as another green option for India.
Steiner said that Germany took 12 years to change its energy matrix from nuclear to renewable. Portugal and Spain had taken a decade to source 40 % and 20 % of its electricity from green sources.
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Ramesh reminded him that Germany’s neighbour France still gets 70 % of the energy from nuclear and said it should be left to individual countries to choose their energy sources. A point with the UN official agreed.
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Ramesh reminded him that Germany’s neighbour France still gets 70 % of the energy from nuclear and said it should be left to individual countries to choose their energy sources. A point with the UN official agreed.
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The minister, who spent the day advocating a balance between environment and economic growth, slammed his own government for allocating Rs 2,500 every year to each of one lakh schools in India.
“The amount is laughable for a country whose economic growth is nine percent. I don’t think doubling the amount will make government of India bankrupt,” he said, while taking a dig at growth advocates.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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