Putting forth an ambitious task of making electrified highways to reduce dependence on oil, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said a prototype of electric buses based on rolling stock of metro coaches is ready. Also he announced that a plant to retrofit Metro coaches for making them compatible for road use is coming up at Sindi, where a dry port is under construction.

 

 

 Nitin Gadkari unveiling policy brief at GRIHA Council Regional meet as Sanjay Seth, Ajit Sagne, Ulhas Debadwar, S S Salunkhe, Shabnam Bassi and others look on. (Pic by Anil Futane)

 

Speaking at signing of MoU between GRIHA Council, rating agency for Green Buildings in India, and Public Works Department (PWD) on Friday, Gadkari exhorted engineers working in Government sector to think out of box. Today we more than need innovation to address challenges of ecology and environment. Also it’s need of time to encourage new ideas and best way to do it is reward officers who have power to think of sustainable future.

 

The programme was 10th regional GRIHA Council meeting to be held at Hotel Raddison Blu. Gadkari further said that he planned to make six districts of Nagpur Division diesel free and said thrust would be on bio-CNG. Seven bio-digester are being installed in city to process 650 tonnes of manual sludge and 250 tonnes of waste from meat market to generate the required Bio-CNG. Also we are planning to run 450 buses, 150 vehicles and 50 trucks on fuel evolved from rice husk.

 

Sanjay Seth, Chief Executive Officer, GRIHA Council, Ajit Sagne, Secretary (Works), PWD, Maharashtra Government, Chief Engineer S S Salunkhe, S S Salunkhe, Shabnam Bassi were also seated on the dais.

He further said to tide over increasing pollution we need to cut down on carbon emission and hence while designing Green Building new concepts and features must be thought off. The Minister also informed the audience about resolving shortage of drinking water by desalinating sea water. The problem with purification was cost of electricity and to tide over it Gadkari said he pressed for installation of 2000 MW solar/wind hybrid plant at Kandla port thereby reducing per unit cost to Rs. 2.40. This he said will now help in tiding over shortage of drinking water along 7500 sea coast in the country. Also the recycled water from municipal waste can be supplied for agriculture.

 

The formula of using sea water is far cheaper and quite less taxing on environment as we may not need big dams.

Earlier, Sanjay Seth said GRIHA is committed to capacity building of PWD engineers. He lauded steps taken by PWD in going for Green rating of Government buildings. Ajit Sagne giving information about ratings said that 165 building have got four star rating. The programme was compered by Shewta Shelgaonkar while Shabnam Bassi proposed vote of thanks.