BY: SWIKAR OLI
It seems India is as sick as we are of hearing about its pollution. Recent studies have linked their pollution to scary health effects and mounting death tolls. While their environmental policies are well overdue, the recent attempts at going clean shows they are heading in the right direction.
The Cochin International Airport (CIAL) is the first airport in the world to run on 100 per cent solar power. The 45 acre facility – the size of about 25 soccer fields – is equipped with 46,000 solar panels and has full energy independence by generating about 52,000 units of electricity daily. The project cost $9.5 million to build.
“When we had realized that the power bill is on the higher side, we contemplated possibilities,” said V.J.Kurian, the energy facility’s managing director, in a recent press release. And numbers show that India will be saving more than just money on its electricity bill. The project is set to reduce 300,000 tons of carbon emissions over the next 25 years, which the report says is akin to planting three million trees.
According to The Telegraph, the airport is the third largest in the country by passengers, and received 6.8 million passengers in the 2014-2015 fiscal year.
India is quickly becoming a leader in harnessing solar energy. Its 750 mega-watt (MW) solar power facility in Madhya Pradesh will become the world’s largest, far exceeding the current 392 MW facility set up in California. For perspective, that is a little more than 60 times the power generated by the CIAL.
Sources: tiozambia.com, ecowanderlust.com, wordlypost.in, archivi.diariodelweb.it
