Energy Production gets 3rd Priority of Bihar Govt:

Addressing the Bihar Growth Conference, organized by International Growth Centre (IGC) India-Bihar, Sushil Modi, Bihar Dy. CM said that Bihar’s  high growth rate of 11%-plus was based on societal needs. "The biggest issue is to ensure the reach of government projects to every section of the society."   

Growth Areas:

1)Bihar has great potential for small investments. "We would like to concentrate on micro and medium enterprises as well as food-processing industries," he said and added that improvement of public delivery systems would be the government's priority. 

2)Agriculture has emerged as a major growth propeller as illustrated by China's example. It can play a decisive role in poverty alleviation. " Our aim is to double the farm output through scientific interventions," Modi said.

3)Another major area that warrants government attention, Modi agreed, is energy production. "We are on the job, looking for coal linkages and power purchase agreements," he said and added one such agreement is through for a 450-MW power plant to start generation by 2014. 

4)Roads have been constructed, but their maintenance is another challenge facing the government. Vocational education and skill development for generating quality human resource are also on the government's radar, the deputy CM said and stressed the need to check migration of Biharis to Gulf countries. 

Arunish Chawla, secretary to Planing Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, predicted that Bihar would be a developed state by 2015. "The Central government has accelerated the development expenditure for Bihar," he said but cautioned that the quality of expenditure is equally important to sustain a double-digit growth. Central allocations have been increasing as the Planning Commission also realizes that Bihar is growing very fast, the Bihar-cadre IAS official said. 

JNU's economics teacher Satish Jain pleaded for increased private investments in education sector and stress on skill enhancement if Bihar has to grow. The charitable contributions towards education have almost dried up and too much emphasis is being put on award of degrees than attainment of knowledge and skill," the professor pointed out. 

IGC India-Bihar's Anjan Mukherji said their two major areas of research have been structural transformation and resource mobilization. "We will provide all logistical and research support needed by policy makers and other stake holders for the state's growth," IGC's advisory board chairman Shaibal Gupta said as he advocated for result-oriented governance for the simple reason of people having very high expectations. 

Progress on -- carbon emissions and managing ecosystems as the price of solar cells continues to come down: Carl Pope

There has been some progress in the past one year on carbon emissions and managing ecosystemas, as  the price of solar cells continues to come down.

Any rational projection of likely carbon emissions for the next decade is smaller, much smaller, than it would have been a year ago. Economics, not climate concern, is the reason. Coal is no longer the obvious low-cost electricity source. Coal power plant fleet all over the world  will be retired  sooner than later, because the plants are old, outmoded, and in need of billions of dollars in upgrades. With natural gas prices down and coal prices up, they're not worth the investment.

There is no price on carbon yet, but markets are acting as if there will be.   Globally, coal is looking less like the obvious choice for two reasons. There's not enough of it at the price people expected because coal reserves are not as easy to mine as once estimated.  And meanwhile, the price of solar cells continues to come down so that in many uses and locations solar is already competitive with new coal because it doesn't require the same transmission investments -- and complete grid parity seems likely in the next decade. 

And now let's look at ecosystems. Deforestation is responsible for 20 percent of CO2 emissions globally. And while global dialogue on fossil fuels has bogged down, truly hopeful progress has been made -- and may continue to be made -- on collective action to protect forests. There's considerable doubt that the current UN architecture for saving forests, called REDD, is the real answer, but Norway and Indonesia are well along the way toward a billion dollar deal that would set a model for the rest of us. If, of course, logging interests don't sabotage it. 

Brazil, historically the center of concern for deforestation, has been making major progress without any global partner. Deforestation rates are down almost half in the past year, and down 90 percent from the 2004 peak. Brazil is not alone. Indeed, seven major tropical forest countries (China, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, India and Vietnam) have made a transition from net deforestation to net reforestation. But here again there is a caveat. In six of the seven (India being the exception) the countries substituted imported wood, often illegally sourced, for the domestic logging they had halted.  

The facts on the ground are a good deal brighter than they were a year ago.