Energy from unending source
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
The Khulna City Corporation (KCC) has reportedly entered into an agreement with the local engineering university within the city area, Khulna University of Engineering and Technology (KUET), to jointly conduct with a German university a three-month long baseline survey on urban households and small and medium enterprises of the city on solar energy. The brief news in this regard, which appeared in a section of the press early last week, could be of major significance had it indicated that the era of co-operation between local technology user organisations and higher academic institutions for deriving optimum benefits from basic research in science and technology has begun. Although this approach opens up the avenue for maximising gains from science through localising technologies and their uses -- the firm major step towards modernising a society, it has been hardly weighed properly ever in this country either by government or the private or the public sector organisations.
What has resulted from the apparent apathy to localisation of technologies, more appropriately to research and development (R&D), is the precarious dependence on their import for industrialisation. Some people call it, with more emotion than logic, the exposure to full blast hardware imperialism. They have also coined the phrase 'software imperialism' to describe a one-way traffic in the arena of technology. If both of these are actually modern versions of colonialism, who are at fault for inviting the reliance on their imports? No nation which has sparsely cultivated science and innovation seriously through R&D, could do without. All such nations should only castigate themselves for the lethargy that has kept them off from efforts for enriching the civilisation with their own innovations and inventions.
Co-operation between the KCC and the KUET on solar energy is a good move. Unquestionably, the most reliable source for power to light houses and fire industrial turbines can be the sun. If the energy emitted by this fireball, which burns brilliantly in the tropical region oftener than not, can be harnessed here significantly through innovation of a cheap indigenous technology, this country would overturn the table of many odds. But the work on it will have to be exceptionally dedicated-- different from the conventional local research work, which is usually characterised by redoing of the already done, if credit has to be earned by any or a group of local organisations for a making a worthwhile contribution in this regard.
While local gas as the source of energy is depleting, the move to extract and rely more on the native coal is being debated upon. But the fact remains that coal mining in this deltaic country of alluvial soil may not be significantly hazard-free. Costs in terms of environmental damage may equal or outweigh benefits from the mining in the long run. The search for alternative local source or sources of energy ought to be extensive for the nation to be able to assure itself that its dependence on external sources of energy will be increasingly lesser. The world would gradually enter into an era of progressively intense competition for procurement of energy on further industrialisation. Solar energy, on harnessing efficiently with an indigenous technology, may extend the needed assurance. For this reason, intensified research in collaboration between the various organisations and higher academic institutions should be encouraged both, privately, by enterprising individuals and organisations and, officially, by the government. In fact, R&D through such collaboration on a wide scale in varied areas is not only desirable but also the requirement of the time in this new age of global competition.
What has resulted from the apparent apathy to localisation of technologies, more appropriately to research and development (R&D), is the precarious dependence on their import for industrialisation. Some people call it, with more emotion than logic, the exposure to full blast hardware imperialism. They have also coined the phrase 'software imperialism' to describe a one-way traffic in the arena of technology. If both of these are actually modern versions of colonialism, who are at fault for inviting the reliance on their imports? No nation which has sparsely cultivated science and innovation seriously through R&D, could do without. All such nations should only castigate themselves for the lethargy that has kept them off from efforts for enriching the civilisation with their own innovations and inventions.
Co-operation between the KCC and the KUET on solar energy is a good move. Unquestionably, the most reliable source for power to light houses and fire industrial turbines can be the sun. If the energy emitted by this fireball, which burns brilliantly in the tropical region oftener than not, can be harnessed here significantly through innovation of a cheap indigenous technology, this country would overturn the table of many odds. But the work on it will have to be exceptionally dedicated-- different from the conventional local research work, which is usually characterised by redoing of the already done, if credit has to be earned by any or a group of local organisations for a making a worthwhile contribution in this regard.
While local gas as the source of energy is depleting, the move to extract and rely more on the native coal is being debated upon. But the fact remains that coal mining in this deltaic country of alluvial soil may not be significantly hazard-free. Costs in terms of environmental damage may equal or outweigh benefits from the mining in the long run. The search for alternative local source or sources of energy ought to be extensive for the nation to be able to assure itself that its dependence on external sources of energy will be increasingly lesser. The world would gradually enter into an era of progressively intense competition for procurement of energy on further industrialisation. Solar energy, on harnessing efficiently with an indigenous technology, may extend the needed assurance. For this reason, intensified research in collaboration between the various organisations and higher academic institutions should be encouraged both, privately, by enterprising individuals and organisations and, officially, by the government. In fact, R&D through such collaboration on a wide scale in varied areas is not only desirable but also the requirement of the time in this new age of global competition.