China Approves Biggest State-backed Renewable Project for Green Hydrogen
The Chinese region of Inner Mongolia has approved a massive power project that will use solar and wind to produce green hydrogen.
Inner Mongolia's Energy Administration has given the go ahead to a cluster of plants in the cities of Ordos and Baotou that will use 1.85 gigawatts of solar and 370 megawatts of wind to produce 66,900 tons of green hydrogen a year, the Hydrogen Energy Industry Promotion Association said in a report. Development will begin in October and the projects will be operational in mid-2023.
The project, which would produce enough hydrogen output to displace about 180 million gallons of gasoline a year if it were used for fuel cell vehicles, is the biggest yet to be spearheaded by the government.
Aug 18, 2021
Khattar Inaugurates Haryana's First Waste to Energy Project in Murthal
Chief Minister of Haryana Manohar Lal Khattar inaugurated state's first waste-to-energy (WTE) project in Murthal, Sonepat, which is developed by JBM Group.
This plant, developed by JBM Environment Management, is India's first integrated WTE project under the public private partnership (PPP) model.
JBM Enviro's WTE plant has a power generation capacity of 8 MW and can process up to 750 tonnes of solid waste generated daily from the Sonepat-Panipat cluster.
JBM Enviro had signed the concession agreement with the Government of Haryana to build and operate the power plant in 2017.
Aug 17, 2021
Indian Scientists Discover 'Mermaid' Plant Species
Indian scientists have discovered a new plant species in India's Andamans archipelago.
Biologists found a marine green algae during a trip to the island in 2019.
Identification is laborious, and it took the scientists nearly two years to confirm that the species had been discovered for the first time.
Scientists say this is the first discovery of a species of algae in the islands in nearly four decades.
Scientists from the Central University of Punjab have named the specie Acetabularia jalakanyakae.
Jalakanyaka in Sanskrit literally means mermaid and a goddess of oceans. The scientists say they were influenced by the fictional character Little Mermaid in the eponymous fairy tale by Danish writer Hans Christian Anderson.
The newly discovered species is so stunning. It has caps with intricate designs as if it were umbrellas of a mermaid.
The main feature of the newly discovered species is that the plant is made up of just one gigantic cell with just one nucleus - botanically, the condition is called "coenocytic".
Two New Species of Sauropod Dinosaurs Unearthed in China
Paleontologists have identified two new species of giant herbivorous dinosaurs from fossils found in the Turpan-Hami Basin, Xinjiang, northwestern China.
The two new dinosaurs lived in what is now China during the Early Cretaceous epoch, between 130 and 120 million years ago.
Dubbed 'Silutitan sinensis' and 'Hamititan xinjiangensis', they were about 20 m and 17 m long, respectively.
Both species belong to Somphospondyli, a large clade of titanosauriform sauropods that lived from the Late Jurassic until the end of the Late Cretaceous.
Aug 16, 2021
Four more Indian Wetlands Added to Ramsar List
Four more wetlands from India have been added to the Ramsar list and have been recognised as wetlands of global importance in accordance with the Ramsar Convention.
India is home to more than a dozen of threatened and near threatened bird species.
Four sites that have been included are Thol from Gujarat, Wadhwana from Gujarat, Sultanpur from Haryana and Bhindawas from Haryana.
These sites are home to endangered Egyptian Vulture, Sociable Lapwing, Saker Falcon, and near threatened Dalmatian Pelican.
With the latest addition, the number of Ramsar sites in India has reached to 46.
July 2021 is Officially the Hottest Month Ever
Global warming and climate change can't be ignored any longer. July 2021 has earned a dubious distinction - of being the hottest month EVER, in recorded history of the world. Reseachers further point out that it is quite likely that 2021 will rank among the 10 warmest years on record. According to new global data released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), extreme heat is also a reflection of the long-term changes outlined in a major report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 of a degree Celsius) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees Celsius), making it the hottest July since records began 142 years ago.
Ghaziabad is World's Second most Polluted City of 2020
Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad was adjudged the second most polluted city out of the 50 'most polluted cities' in the world in 2020 by a report prepared by British company HouseFresh. Ghaziabad reported an average Air Quality Index (AQI) of 2.5 particulate matter (PM) in 106.6µg/m3.
Preceding Ghaziabad, Chinese city of Hotan in Xinjiang province has been named the most polluted city with a PM2.5 of 110.2µg/m3. The report attributed the air pollution in Hotan to sandstorms resulting from its closeness to the Taklimakan Desert, which is the largest shifting sand desert in the world.
Manikganj in Bangladesh stood third in the list of 'most polluted cities' in the world with a PM2.5 of 80.2µg/m3.
Aug 15, 2021
Highest Recorded Temperature in European History Reported in Italy
Italy may have just recorded the hottest temperature in European history, according to preliminary reports from local meteorologists. And perhaps fittingly, the culprit of the heat wave has been named Lucifer.
Syracuse, a city on the coast of the Italian island of Sicily, registered temperatures of 119.85 degrees Fahrenheit (48.8 degrees Celsius) (Aug. 11). If the measurement is confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, it will break the previous European record of 118.4 F (48 C) recorded in Athens in 1977.
The measurement comes amid a scorching heat wave that has baked the Medditeranean for more than a week, feeding devastating wildfires that have destroyed homes and claimed lives in Italy, Greece, Algeria and Turkey.