CLEANER FUTURE

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 20: The much-hyped Centre-funded solar city project has come into focus for wrong reasons.

At a time when a master plan for the implementation of the solar city project in Bhubaneswar is under preparation, doubts have been raised in some government quarters regarding the project’s future as it has allegedly fallen into wrong hands.

“Curiously, the job of preparing the master plan has been assigned to the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, a well-known NGO, some of whose solar energy-run pilot projects in the city have failed to achieve much success,” said a source.

The Union ministry of new and renewable energy has estimated the project cost for Bhubaneswar at Rs 33.37 lakh.

“While some of the solar cells installed by the organisation at the municipal hospital here in 2008 have been working only for the last three to four months, another on the premises of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation is also not working properly. The hospital’s solar power project, which included installation of a solar water heater, a solar refrigerator and solar lights on the premises, had cost nearly Rs 14 lakh,” said the sources.

The only energy saving pilot project of the NGO working properly is the one at the Lingaraj temple. Officials of the NGO, however, claimed that all their projects had been running successfully.

Sources said the solar city project’s blue print for Bhubaneswar, which is one of the 60 cities chosen for the scheme by the central ministry, would be ready by the end of April.

On August 17 last year, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the NGO’s South Asia branch, headquartered in New Delhi, to prepare a master plan for this purpose.

NGO sources said they had so far surveyed more than 2,000 households in the capital city. An official of the NGO also said they were planning to conduct the survey on more commercial and industrial establishments in Bhubaneswar. “We are hopeful that the master plan will be ready by the end of April,” he said.

According to the action plan, the consumption of non-renewable energy sources — in domestic, commercial and industrial categories — will be calculated with the aim of gradually replacing it with renewable energy.

The master plan is expected to focus on the use of solar cells, solar cookers and solar street lighting facilities, which will save 10 per cent of the total energy being consumed from conventional sources.

Sources said after the approval of the master plan, five pilot projects would be implemented in the city and an additional 46-megawatt of power would be generated through renewable energy sources on a daily basis.

The projects also aims at involving various stakeholders such as government agencies, educational institutes, and health care facilities to save energy by using renewable sources.

The electricity requirement of the capital city is 124 million units (12,400 Mega Watt) per month. It is expected to go up by 20 per cent in the near future. The need for exploring and utilising renewable energy sources is very important in a growing city such as Bhubaneswar.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said the corporation would try to ascertain the present status of the work. “After getting the final action plan, we will implement the project with immediate effect,” said Jena.