India, US and others identify 100 projects for clean development

New Delhi, Nov 1 (UNI) India, along with five countries, including the US and Japan, of Asia-Pacific Partnership (APP) on Clean Development and Climate will facilitate nearly 100 projects aimed at reducing environmental pollution.

The projects would help decrease air pollution, ensure energy security and address climate change concerns in a way that promote sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction, Secretary for Environment and Forests Prodipto Ghosh said at press conference here.

He said the APP had set up eight public-private taskforces on cleaner fossil energy, renewable energy and distributed generation, power generation and transmission, steel, aluminum, cement, coal mining and, building and appliances.

The Ministry has formulated eight action plans involving all the identified sectors and India had identified certain projects in the coal and steel sectors," Dr Ghosh said.

A distinctive feature of the Action Plan projects is involvement of business enterprises from six partner countries.

Virtually all of the actions identified will invlove business, and a number of the activities will be undertaken primarily or exclusively by companies and associations representing commercial enterprises, he said.

''In this sense, the APPP is building on successful public-private partnership within member countries,'' he added.

Some initial funding from government and industry sources has already been identified.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, Mr Paula J Dobriansky, US Under Secretary For Democracy and Global Affairs, said the projects focus on sharing best parctices, identifying legal, regulatory and market barriers, research and development and demonstration programmes.

''Through these projects, we will promote ways to make power plants run more efficiently, identify opportunity to reduce ways to reduce powerful non-CO2 gas emissions in aluminium process, advance deployment of solar power, hydro and other renewable technologies, work to reduce air emissions from coal mining and cement production and construct greener buildings and appliances,'' he said.

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