Contents
- India-Denmark Green Strategic Partnership
- Use of H-CNG in CNG engines
- 20 years of Himalayan Chandra Telescope
India-Denmark Green Strategic Partnership
Why in news?
Given the shared desire to remain trusted partners, the two Prime Ministers agreed to elevate India-Denmark relations to a Green Strategic Partnership.
Details:
The Green Strategic Partnership is a mutually beneficial arrangement to advance political cooperation, expand economic relations and green growth, create jobs and strengthen cooperation on addressing global challenges and opportunities; with focus on an ambitious implementation of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Areas of cooperation
Energy and Climate Change
The Strategic Sector Cooperation on offshore wind and renewable energy, as well as the India-Denmark Energy Partnership (INDEP) on capacity building, knowledge-sharing and technology transfer on wind energy; energy modeling and integration of renewable energy illustrate the shared commitment to address some of the common global challenges on the path towards global energy transition, green growth and sustainable development.
Environment/Water and Circular Economy
Enhance cooperation in the specific areas of water supply, water distribution, wastewater treatment, sewerage systems, re-use of treated wastewater, water management and energy optimization in the water sector through the Indo-Danish Water Technology Alliance.
What is Circular Economy?
- It is a model that is regenerative by design and aimed at ensuring that products are maintained at their highest utility at all times
- It describes a continuous cycle aimed at preserving capital and minimizing system risk by efficiently tracking and managing finite stocks
- The circular economy requires that value creation be decoupled from consumption of finite resources
Sustainable Urban Development including Smart Cities
Both agreed to strengthen existing City-to-City cooperation between Udaipur and Aarhus and Tumakuru and Aalborg.
Science, Technology, Innovation and Digitization
Shared interest in digitization and digital solutions and business models in the green transition and decided to collaborate for enhancement of development, innovation and demonstration in the field of digital technologies to support green sustainable growth.
Multilateral Cooperation
This includes strong multilateral cooperation to face the urgency to step up global efforts to combat the global challenges on energy and climate change and common commitment to the International Energy Agency, the International Renewable Energy Agency and the International Solar Alliance.
About Denmark:
It is made up of the Jutland Peninsula and more than 400 islands in the North Sea. It shares a border with Germany to the south.
Although Denmark is in northern Europe, the warm waters of the Gulf Stream make the climate mild.
Denmark was once covered with trees, but almost all of the original forest has been chopped down. The largest mammal living in Denmark today is the red deer.
Use of H-CNG in CNG engines
Why in news?
Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has allowed use of H-CNG (18% mix of hydrogen) in CNG engines.
Details:
- HCNG stands for hydrogen-enriched compressed natural gas and it combines the advantages of both hydrogen and methane.
CNG & H-CNG
CNG is compressed natural gas. With natural gas mainly composed of methane, CNG emits less air pollutants — carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter — than petrol or diesel.
H-CNG is a blend of hydrogen and CNG, the ideal hydrogen concentration being 18%. Compared to conventional CNG, use of H-CNG can reduce emission of carbon monoxide up to 70%, besides enabling up to 5% savings in fuel, tests by the Automotive Research Association of India and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) have found.
Easy for buses
The EPCA report says Delhi is well placed for a transition to H-CNG for its buses as its public transport system already runs on CNG. “The most promising aspect of this technology is that it will allow for the utilisation of the existing infrastructure of CNG — buses as well as the piping network and dispensing station.”
Manufacture
While recommending the use of H-CNG as an alternative fuel, the NITI Aayog-CII Action Plan for Clean Fuel notes that physical blending of CNG and hydrogen involves a series of energy-intensive steps that would make H-CNG more expensive than CNG.
However, Hydrogen-Enriched Compressed Natural Gas (HCNG) is still under research as though it increases fuel efficiency and reduce carbon emission but it has also led to increased NOx emissions.
20 years of Himalayan Chandra Telescope
Why in news?
In the cold, dry desert of Ladakh, 4500 meters above the mean sea level, for two decades, the 2-m diameter optical-infrared Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) has been scanning the night sky in search of stellar explosions, comets, asteroids, and exo-planets, has completed 20 years.
Details:
- The Himalayan Chandra Telescope is a 2.01 meters (6.5 feet) diameter optical-infrared telescope .
- It is named after India-born Nobel laureate Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar.
- It contains a modified Ritchey-Chretien system with a primary mirror made of ULE ceramic which is designed to withstand low temperatures it experiences.
The telescope is mounted with 3 science instruments:
- Himalaya Faint Object Spectrograph (HFOSC)
- The near-IR imager and
- The optical CCD imager.
RESEARCH AREAS
- Study of solar system bodies like; comets, asteroids etc. and young stellar objects.
- Study of open and globular clusters and variable stars in them, abundance analysis of elements in the atmosphere of evolved stars.
