IISc Bangalore joins GreenTouch to reduce carbon footprint

In a move that could accelerate the process of reducing the carbon footprint, IISc Bangalore has joined GreenTouch.

GreenTouch is a consortium of technology companies (like Alcatel Lucent), non-governmental researchers and academics that focus on communication and data networks, which form the backbone of the Internet. Typically, telecom and cell tower infrastructure companies emit a lot of carbons and are looking at ways to reduce it.

“With the expertise of IISc, we will be able to work at newer ways to reducing this carbon footprint. At present, this is at alarming levels and needs to be brought down by 15 per cent,” said Dr Gee Rittenhouse, Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel-Lucent's Software, Services and Solutions Group.

Students at IISc will work on projects that are specific to GreenTouch that would centre around ways to increase energy efficiency in wireless communication. The former Vice-President of Bell Labs Wireless Research added that carbon emissions emanated by networking equipments such as routers and base station antennas need to be reduced.

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry currently accounts for two per cent of worldwide carbon emissions, and that figure is expected to at least double over the next decade as more people seek to connect with each other, according to analysts. The students in IISc will also work on future architecture of networks.

“Modern day networks are optimised for performance and not energy efficiency. A network optimised for performance and energy implies a very different design and architecture and this precisely what is needed to be sustainable going forward,” said Dr Rittenhouse.

He added that the consortium would bring in technologies such as Large Scale Antenna System (LSAS) that can harness the power of thousands of antennas without increase in additional power.

Growth of Internet usage is expected to drive growth in wireless access usage in India, which has more than 800 million cellphone subscribers.

Pakistan to challenge carbon credits to India

Pakistan will challenge in the international court of arbitration a decision by a UN climate agency to grant carbon credits to India on a hydropower project without clearance of its trans-boundary environmental impact, a media report said today.
An inquiry by the Water and Power Ministry concluded that India secured carbon credits for the 45 MW Nimoo-Bazgo hydropower project from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change without mandatory clearance from Pakistan, the Dawnnewspaper quoted its sources as saying.
Pakistani officials have alleged that India secured the carbon credits even though Pakistani authorities had not seen or cleared the cross-boundary environmental impact assessment report for the project on river Indus.
Islamabad has now decided to challenge the UNFCC's decision in the international court of arbitration "because legal requirements were allegedly not fulfilled by the UN agency", the report said.
Officials alleged the Indian government "misled the UN agency through fake and fictitious documents that might have shown Pakistan's consent to the project because there was no such record available in Pakistan".
"It is still not established how India was able to get carbon credit benefits for the Nimoo-Bazgo project, which is located on trans-boundary water, and for which ratification of the parties concerned should have been procured before hand by it under clause 37(b) of UNFCC," an unnamed official was quoted as saying.
"Although it is too difficult to get carbon credits on a trans-boundary project such as Nimoo-Bazgo, due to lack of contest by the Permanent Commissioner for Indus Waters (PCIW), India was able to get carbon credits on this project," the official said.