LUCKNOW: Highlighting the UK government's keenness to work in the clean energy sector in India, junior minister in UK government's department of energy and climate change Baroness Verma has said the country would particularly like to take up more collaborative ventures in UP.
Verma, who is also a member of the House of Lords, visited Tanda village of Jagdishpur block in Amethi on Wednesday with Dr RK Pachauri, director general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) on Wednesday. The village is a TERI intervention site. They inaugurated a solar micro-grid connection (SMG) for provision of household lighting and forced draft improved biomass cooking stoves for 20 households at the village.
India and the UK are working together on an innovative project to provide improved cooking stoves and economic opportunities to thousands of women, Verma said.
"How people use energy and how it changes their lives is interesting. During my visit to the village I saw how the programme is driven by locals," she said. The team visited the village as part of the department of international development (DFID) and TERI's 'clean energy access partnership' initiative.
Making a mention of the petroleum ministry's recent suggestion to shut down petrol pumps during the night, Pachauri said, "Why is this being suggested? This is because India is finding it burdensome to meet the energy demand. We can use more and more of renewable energy resources which we have in abundance."
In 2008, TERI initiated 'Lighting a Billion Lives (LaBL)' campaign. Under it, close to 100,000 solar lanterns are already in use, benefiting nearly 1.3 million lives across the country. UP is one of the key states for both the lighting and cooking initiatives of TERI. Under LaBL, close to 400 villages have been covered under the state through direct interventions, touching more than 330,000 lives. Similarly, the initiative on cooking stoves has reached out to close to 2131 households in the state. The projects focus on women and children who are primarily impacted by indoor air pollution from traditional cooking stoves and kerosene-based lamps for lighting.The effort is not only to provide direct benefit of clean energy technologies to women but also bring them into the mainstream of the energy enterprise value chain.
"It is impressive how women have taken the lead in Tanda in this area," said the UK minister.
