Green Options

In an effort to tackle Pakistan’s growing energy shortage, representatives of the burgeoning Chinese solar industry have offered to cooperate with the country on a high profile partnership to manufacture solar energy equipment.

Indian company Bharat Petroleum has announced plans to bottle purified waste water from the manufacture of hydrogen fuel cells, and sell it at it’s fueling stations across the nation.

In a country plagued by poor water quality and shortages across many regions, the company is keen to exploit high demand for pure bottled water. According to some estimates, as many as 1,600 Indians die every day as a result of water-borne diseases.

By Lester R. Brown

With water shortages emerging as a constraint on food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity during the last half of the twentieth century.

Worldwide, average irrigation water productivity is now roughly 1 kilogram of grain per ton of water used. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of

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The new Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, repealed a legal challenge launched by the city’s former mayor and gave the go-ahead for the construction of a desalination plant last week.

Thames Water Utilities will now be allowed to continue building a plant on the north bank of the Thames River in the London Borough of Newham and begin construction of another plant in Beckton, East London.

“Today’s news is a victory for common sense,” stated Thames Water CEO David Owens in a press release. “The desalination plant is a vital part of our response to this situation, and we are committed to getting it built as quickly as possible, so it is available to provide more safe, clean drinking water to Londoners by 2010.”