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Thanks Seetaraman Iyer for the questionWhat is your view on Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) auctioning unused vessels and ornaments from famous Hindu shrines in Kerala citing financial crunch?Good move in my opinion!!!Travancore Devaswom Board has initiated process of auctioning unused vessels, brass lamps and utensils under its possession to raise funds.For a clarity, NO ORNAMENTS of precious metals like Gold, Silver or jewels have been part of this exercise, rather only utensils and lamps, so that part of question has no meaning.TDB to sell unused lamps, utensils in temples to overcome financial crisisWhats unusual in this? Isn’t normal things?Travancore Devaswom Board is the OWNER of almost all temples operating in Travancore side of the Kerala and its a constitutional authority operated with public scrutiny of CAG as in case of funds and monitored by Devaswom Ombudsman of Devaswom Bench of Kerala High Court.It operates nearly 1300 main temples and almost double the number of minor temples. Approx 6500 employees are in direct payroll of the TDB which are mostly priests, supporting priests, temple performers, artists and other temple admin staff. TDB employees are government servants and hence they get all government benefits, like fixed salaries (akin to the rates of various class equivalents in normal Govt service). This means a priest in TDB temple earns minimum of 30K to 40K as base salary with all other traditional privileges apart from all other standard Govt service benefits. In addition, they even get retirement benefits like any other government pensioners.This is all because TDB is a constitutional authority established under provision of Indian constitution and protected by acts of Niyamasabha (Legislature) and Royal covenant signed between Kingdom of Travancore and Union of India.TDB needs funds to manage all its temple staff. So far, rich temples brings in revenues which gets cross-subsidized for payments to poor temples.Now entire temples and places of worship is closed across India and no revenue comes into the temples. Temples has primarily 3 forms of revenuePayments made by devotees to perform various poojas- Vazhipadu for which they buy various Pooja ticketsOfferings made to Hundi/Vanchi aka Offering Box. It can be from a simple Banana to gold coins to jewels or even land estates. Its called Kanikka offerings in MalayalamAmounts received from assets like rent from temple buildings, performance fees, licences, royalties, farm revenue etc.The first 2 key revenue sources is now fully shut as temples are no more open to public. Only the third option exist, which is insufficient to run such a huge establishment.Temples work akin to a Bureaucratic order in Kerala. Its not typical like North Indian temples which are primarily Bhajan mandirs and have very less temple staff (if any, its mostly few people to manage). Kerala temples are tantric institutions and need to have an elaborate temple hierarchy order.Even a very small temple, needs minimum 4 staff just for priestly functions. Adding establishment and other ritualistic functions, every small temple requires a minimum of 6–8 staff. So as even if a temple is closed, it has to do all the minimum poojas of the day. A simple Ganapathi Homam would approx cost minimum of Rs 2000–3000 just for the expenses of that pooja. Around 8 sets of Poojas are mandatory per day, which means on average, just for poojas, more than 20K Rs is required. Even if one condenses to bare minimum, still you require an average of Rs 15K per day for poojas alone + Establishment costs.From where the money comes in?In last two months, TDB used some of its reserve money as well as some grants they received from the govt. But how long this will go ahead? Without opening the temples, TDB cannot expect money flow to happen.Its in this context, auctioning useless movable assets were decided.And this is nothing new.Every temple normally gets a huge number of utensils, lamps and other brass objects from devotees.Its a custom in Kerala, devotees to offer brass lamps to the deity for attaining anything prosperous in nature. We call this ritual- Neeyvillaku Samarpanam or offering Ghee lamps. Same way, in many temples brass vessels like Uruli (a large open vessel) is given as offering to the deity. This ritual is common in Snake temples called as Urulikamathal or turning an Uruli upside down to have fertility. Even in other Devi temples, new Brass Urulis were given by devotees to signify sexual happiness. Same way many other brass things like Thattu (Plates), small statues of deities, pots etc.A temple need certain number of lamps and other utensils, but not so many. All these that come in, are generally kept in strong rooms of the temple and later transferred to some other temples upon request or simply forgotten about it.So bigger temples like Guruvayur etc, have started auctioning the excess lamps they have since 2006. Guruvayur normally receives more than 9000 new lamps on per day basis as the tradition of offering Neyvillakku is extremely popular there. What can it do with all these lamps? Previously they used to convert these lamps back into brass metal and sell it to various metal worksmiths to convert into some other products. But it didn’t bring any key revenue as cost of converting these lamps back into brass was costly.So they started a new counter in the temple, selling the lamps as blessed lamps by the deity and public buys it as its a sign of prosperity back in their home. In this way, the Devaswom started making a good revenue out of sale of these useless lamps.Guruvayur’s Lamp Auctioning center where the Devaswom auctions lamps on daily basis to devoteesHowever unlike Guruvayur, which is a single temple Devaswom, TDB is a corporate devaswom managing nearly 1300 temples. So it never took efforts to sell these useless stuff, rather kept in strong rooms.There is another side of the story.These utensils and lamps are not well accounted as its not a purchased item, rather donated item. So officials and members of each temple advisory units used to embezzle some of it thro’ black market as part of temple corruption as its impossible to audit these movable assets.If I take 2 lamps from strong room if I had access with each lamp costing some what around Rs 3000–5000, does it hurt me? Rather its a revenue for me. Its not possible for CAG or LSG auditors to sit and count lakhs of lamps and other vessels held in these stores of so many temples.So most of the temple advisory units and officials at the local level used to block any attempt to sell these useless things as it helps them to earn additional revenue in secret.Till now, no one bothered much on these as there was strong revenue coming in other ways. But now TDB has to look for monetizing these useless things.It helps to cut down their storage costs as well as earn a revenue.People have money at home and if TDB sells a lamp citing as holy lamp blessed by their favourite deity, people will buy. It brings in revenue for TDB to carry out its operations.Now auctioning is not an easy task, as Devaswom itself is a constitutional body and has so many proceedings.It has to file an petition to Devaswom Bench of Kerala High Court seeking for the same. The Devaswom Bench will appoint an Amicus Curiae to check on the status and has to form a committee to take stock of the properties. This has to be done by LSG auditors and the audit report has to go to Devaswom Standing Committee of Kerala Niyamasabha. The standing committee’s report will be tabled on the floor of the house and after which the government has to issue an approval. Based on this approval, Amicus curiae and ombudsman can seek for Court’s approval, provided all cases against it has been disposed.Only after court’s final approval, Devaswom can initiate an auction. Auction reports are to be filed with Accountant General’s office. The acceptance of bid is subjected to clearance from Devaswom Vigilance Dept and govt has to issue final approval.This is one reason, TDB never used to go for auctioning properties as its headache for its department.Now it has no other means other than using these propertiesIn my view, its much good to take pains for this, as opening of temples may take another one or two months more. Even after its opened, its hard to assume, temples will have same crowds as it used to have especially when social distancing rules to be maintained. So there will be a major revenue dip.Govt may support one or two times, not more than that as there is a dip in state exchequers and it cannot further fund Devaswom operations too.So if the Board starts this process now, by Onam, they can start selling unused ones and raise revenues to sustain atleast for few months or a year.Unique times requires unique solutionsFurther readingArun Mohan (അരുൺ മോഹൻ)'s answer to Is it true that the Kerala Devaswom board is used by the government for other purposes?Arun Mohan (അരുൺ മോഹൻ)'s answer to How did the temples of Kerala come under the state government of the Devaswom board administration?

No. They are the most expensive, unreliable source of grid electricity and they do the most harm to the environment in their manufacture and location.Why? Intermittency, when the sun does not shine without adequate storage makes solar a very bad investment. The cost must take account the back up power provided by fossil fuels and this make solar the most expensive renewable. As result wind and solar are the most expensive total cost energy source and have no chance of replacing the current 85% energy consumption by fossil fuels.The earth is cooling and particularly the Northern Hemisphere this further reduces any value for unreliable solar in the winter snow.Europe’s Frosty Spring: Germany Sees Coldest April in 40 Years… Frost Frequency Of “Unusual Dimension”By P Gosselin on2. May 2021Germany’s April, 2021, was the coldest in 40 years, and the frostiest in over 90 years, according to the country’s DWD national weather service.Solar panels covered by snow in northern Germany in early April. Photo by P. GosselinWhen warmer than normal temperatures get recorded, the German DWD national weather service is usually quick to hint at global warming induced change.But now that April 2021 has turned out to be unusually cool, the DWD is quick to point out it was due to ” inflowing cool and dry air masses”, which of course is correct. It’s just that they are slow to point out that inflows of warm air are the real reasons for warmer than normal months.At its website here the DWD reports the preliminary results for April, 2021, for Germany. The DWD uses data gathered from some 2000 stations across the country, and so the results are very reliable and tell us what’s going on across Central Europe.“Unusually large number of frost days”It was “an April that was clearly too cool with an unusually large number of frost days”, reports the DWD. Compared to the current and warmer reference period 1991 to 2020, the deviation was -2.9 degrees C.Germany’s April weather was dominated by cool northerly winds that pushed the temperature level down significantly.Coolest since 1980“After years of very warm April months, this year’s Easter month ended up being the coolest since 1980,” reports the DWD. “Frost frequency also took on an unusual dimension. With just under 13 days of frost on average at all DWD stations, it was the second frostiest April in this country after 1929.”Europe’s Frosty Spring: Germany Sees Coldest April in 40 Years… Frost Frequency Of “Unusual Dimension”New ReportEnergy and Climate Policy—An Evaluation of Global Climate Change Expenditure 2011–2018Energies 2020, 13(18), 4839; Energy and Climate Policy—An Evaluation of Global Climate Change Expenditure 2011–2018AbstractConcern for climate change is one of the drivers of new, transitional energy policies oriented towards economic growth and energy security, along with reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and preservation of biodiversity. Since 2010, the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) has been publishing annual Global Landscape of Climate Finance reports. According to these reports, US$3660 billion has been spent on global climate change projects over the period 2011–2018. Fifty-five percent of this expenditure has gone to wind and solar energy. According to world energy reports, the contribution of wind and solar to world energy consumption has increased from 0.5% to 3% over this period. Meanwhile, coal, oil, and gas continue to supply 85% of the world’s energy consumption, with hydroelectricity and nuclear providing most of the remainder. With this in mind, we consider the potential engineering challenges and environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the main energy sources (old and new). We find that the literature raises many concerns about the engineering feasibility as well as environmental impacts of wind and solar. However, none of the current or proposed energy sources is a “panacea”. Rather, each technology has pros and cons, and policy-makers should be aware of the cons as well as the pros when making energy policy decisions. We urge policy-makers to identify which priorities are most important to them, and which priorities they are prepared to compromise on. View Full-TextDaunting engineering challengesEngineers have always known that large solar and wind farms are plagued by the so-called “intermittency problem”. Unlike conventional electricity generation sources which provide continuous and reliable energy 24/7 on demand, wind and solar farms only produce electricity when there is wind or sunlight.“The average household expects their fridges and freezers to run continuously and to be able to turn on and off the lights on demand. Wind and solar promoters need to start admitting that they are not capable of providing this type of continuous and on-demand electricity supply on a national scale that modern societies are used to,” says Dr Ronan Connolly, co-author of the new review.The problem is not easily solved by large-scale battery storage because it would require huge batteries covering many hectares of land. Tesla has built a large battery to stabilize the grid in South Australia. It has a capacity of 100 MW/129 MWh and covers a hectare of land. One of the papers reviewed in this new study estimated that, if the state of Alberta, Canada, were to switch from coal to renewable energy, using natural gas and battery storage as back-up, it would require 100 of these large batteries to meet peak demand.Some researchers have suggested that the variations in energy production can be evened out by building continental electricity transmission networks, e.g., a network connecting wind farms in north-west Europe with solar farms in the south-east, but this requires massive investment. It is likely to create bottlenecks where the capacity of inter-connections is insufficient, and does not do away with the underlying vulnerability to lulls in sun and wind that can last for days on end.Energy and Climate Policy—An Evaluation of Global Climate Change Expenditure 2011–2018Concern for climate change is one of the drivers of new, transitional energy policies oriented towards economic growth and energy security, along with reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and preservation of biodiversity. Since 2010, the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) has been publishing annual Global Landscape of Climate Finance reports. According to these reports, US$3660 billion has been spent on global climate change projects over the period 2011–2018. Fifty-five percent of this expenditure has gone to wind and solar energy. According to world energy reports, the contribution of wind and solar to world energy consumption has increased from 0.5% to 3% over this period. Meanwhile, coal, oil, and gas continue to supply 85% of the world’s energy consumption, with hydroelectricity and nuclear providing most of the remainder. With this in mind, we consider the potential engineering challenges and environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the main energy sources (old and new). We find that the literature raises many concerns about the engineering feasibility as well as environmental impacts of wind and solar. However, none of the current or proposed energy sources is a “panacea”. Rather, each technology has pros and cons, and policy-makers should be aware of the cons as well as the pros when making energy policy decisions. We urge policy-makers to identify which priorities are most important to them, and which priorities they are prepared to compromise on.https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/18/4839Fossil fuels continue to provide 85% of world energy consumption outstripping wind and solar by a huge margin.ENERGY POLICY, NEWS 31 MAR, 2021“Explosive” German Government Audit Report: ‘Energiewende’ Has Become “A Danger For All Of Germany”By P. GosselinA new German government audit report warns that the Energiewende is exploding costwise, and that there is a real danger of electricity shortfalls…”a danger for all of Germany”Daniel Wetzel at German national daily Die Welt reports on the latest German Federal Court of Auditors’ warning: “If things continue like this, Germany as a business location is in danger. The costs are out of control – and there is a growing threat of an electricity shortfall.”The “Energiewende” (transition to green energies) has seen Germany recklessly rush into wildly fluctuating wind and solar energy without properly planning the grave impacts they would have on the power supply grid and prices.So explosive is the German Government Audit report that Die Welt and the government auditors see the Energiewende as a “danger for all of Germany”.The German auditors had already voiced harsh criticism three years earlier in another special report, whose main focus had been on the high cost of the Energiewende. The latest report now also includes “an explosive analysis” on power supply instability and the high probability of power shortfalls.“Since our last review in 2018, too little has been done to successfully shape the energy transition,” said the President of the Federal Court of Audit, Kay Scheller,Dismissing the “real dangers”The report finds that not only have the costs spiraled out of control, but that the German federal government “does not have a sufficient view of the emerging, real dangers to the security of supply” and that “ever higher electricity prices” are to be feared in the current system.German electricity are among the highest in the world, and there is still no end in sight for the cost spiral. One study found that another whopping 525 billon euros will be needed by 2025 to upgrade the power grid, according to Die Welt.Germany endangered, in jeopardyThe development of green energies in Germany has gotten so bad that the Federal Audit Office sees the risk the Energiewende could “endanger Germany as a business location and overburden the financial sustainability of electricity-consuming companies and private households,”“This can then ultimately jeopardize the social acceptance of the energy transition,” warned Scheller.Government making too many rosy assumptionsDie Welt characterizes the Government Audit report as “explosive” and a long overdue wake-up call. The auditors accuse the federal government of not having properly taken into account the consequences of the coal phase-out, making assumptions that seem “unrealistic or are outdated by current political and economic developments” and making overly optimistic assumptions on the future available wind and sun.Underestimating the need for reserve power plantsThe auditors also doubt that the need for reserve power plants was properly determined and that should the government continue its current course with the Energiewende, costs will not only explode, but the risks of grid instability will rise. Already companies are envisioning voluntary temporary shutdowns in the event of power shortages.Overall, the Federal Court of Audit finds that essential assumptions made by the government concerning the security of supply are “unrealistic or outdated.”This article appeared on the NoTricksZone website at “Explosive” German Government Audit Report: ‘Energiewende’ Has Become “A Danger For All Of Germany”Subsidies are necessary and they are being phased out and this highlights the unreliable nature of solar that of course leaves consumers in the dark at night as battery storage is inefficient and expensive.Solar power is no substitute for grid electricity needed to run major appliances for cooking and heat.Once upon a time, social justice was synonymous with equal access to modern amenities — electric lighting so poor children could read at night, refrigerators so milk could be kept on hand, and washing machines to save the hands and backs of women. Malthus was rightly denounced by generations of socialists as a cruel aristocrat who cloaked his elitism in pseudo-science, and claimed that Nature couldn't possibly feed any more hungry months.Now, at the very moment modern energy arrives for global poor — something a prior generation of socialists would have celebrated and, indeed, demanded — today's leading left-wing leaders advocate a return to energy penury. The loudest advocates of cheap energy for the poor are on the libertarian Right, while The Nation dresses up neo-Malthusianism as revolutionary socialism.Left-wing politics was once about destabilizing power relations between the West and the Rest. Now, under the sign of climate justice, it's about sustaining them.Left-wing politicians like Al Gore, Obama and Naomi Klein crusading against cheap coal and efficient fossil fuels represents the greatest progressive reversal in history.http://***http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/its-not-about-the-climate***;×NOW READING:BIDEN’S ANTI-FOSSIL FUEL AGENDA HURTS THE WORLD’S POOR(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)Biden’s Anti-Fossil Fuel Agenda Hurts the World’s PoorBy Katie TahuahuaMarch 03, 2021The first thing Aysha picks up when she opens her eyes to the warm glow of the morning sun is not an iPhone, not an alarm clock, not even a glass of water. It’s her collection of large plastic gasoline canisters. The 13-year-old Ethiopian straps them to her camel — which her family is lucky to have — and begins the four-plus-hour walk to the nearest river. The water there is dirty and brown and unsanitary, but it’s water, and her family needs it to survive.Aysha doesn’t get back home until the sun is already setting. Meanwhile, her brother has gone to school.Women and children walking miles for unclean water in AfricaPresident Biden’s administration — between cries for unity, equity, and an end to poverty and oppression — is beginning to enact policies that will deny Aysha and the countless girls like her the opportunity to move from bleak, backbreaking destitution to a self-actualized life of equality and opportunity.Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21st century. Billions like Aysha in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and even parts of the United States live with little to no access to electricity. Electricity is the one of the simplest solutions to improved health, economic opportunity, education, nutrition, and comfort in the developing world, especially for women and girls.Yet among President Biden’s “Climate Day” executive orders is a unilateral ban on “international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy.” In layman’s terms, the United States of America will no longer extend foreign aid funds to developing nations seeking affordable, reliable energy to lift their citizens out of poverty.For Aysha, that funding could have offered clean running water flowing right to her home, a safer way to cook without inhaling the toxic fumes from burning wood, kerosene or even dung, the opportunity to go to school like her brother, and even such simple gifts as walking safely through her village at night.Westerners unfamiliar with the harsh realities of extreme poverty — many well-meaning renewable energy advocates among them — might imagine shipping solar panels to Africa to be a simple fix. But reaching anywhere near constant power via renewable energy requires deploying massive quantities of renewable energy infrastructure along with expensive battery storage for when the wind isn’t blowing or sun isn’t shining.As attractive as off-grid solar might sound for developing countries, there just isn’t enough battery storage in the world — and there won’t be for several generations — to make renewables more than a tiny Band-Aid on a gaping wound.And without battery storage (or fossil fuel power backup generation), electricity that only works sometimes is little better than no electricity at all. Intermittent, occasional power doesn’t help hospitals refrigerate life-saving vaccines, schools and churches feed hungry children, or entrepreneurs start their businesses.Instead, the best solution to lift communities like Aysha’s around the world out of poverty remains affordable, reliable energy from fossil fuels. It’s no accident that nearly every statistic we use to measure quality of life has improved drastically along with increasing use, and decreasing cost, of fossil fuels. Electricity makes every part of our lives both easier and safer.That includes climate resiliency. Climate-related deaths have plummeted 98.9% since the last century, and that will only improve as more people get access to better health care, more sophisticated emergency management, safer homes, and the other myriad benefits of electricity. Improving the climate resiliency of developing nations by providing greater energy access will yield real benefits regardless of how the climate changes in the future.The abundant fossil energy we produce in the United States — and the technology that makes it both cost-effective and clean — could offer these revolutionary benefits to the developing world for a remarkably small price.If President Biden’s administration is serious about fighting poverty and leading the world in pursuit of equity, it should start by reversing the ban on fossil fuel financing for the developing world.Katie Tahuahua is communications manager for Life:Powered, a national initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ.OCTOBER 30, 20193:08 AMUPDATED A YEAR AGOIn Chile's Atacama Desert, a cautionary tale for bold renewable energy vowsBy Natalia A. Ramos MirandaSTUMBLING BLOCKSChile’s electricity generation matrix relies primarily on largely imported fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil (55%), and its own hydroelectric plants (30%). However, unconventional energy provision has surged in recent years, with solar farms representing 6.5% of the matrix, wind power 5% and biomass 2.1% in 2018, according to the power generation companies’ association.But CSP is not the only renewables technology to have stumbled. Espejo de Tarapacá, 100km (62 miles) from Iquique in Chile’s extreme north, generated significant excitement when it was announced as an innovative pumped storage hydroelectric energy plant.Its environmental permit was approved in 2015 and the project was due to come into operation this year, but ground to a halt as costs escalated. It is now in “financial restructuring,” Juan Andrés Camus, the head of the project, told Reuters, adding that construction should begin next year.Analysts and experts said Chile needs small, flexible and diverse projects, which will between them provide a stable network and help cut emissions.“They shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket but try everything, take advantage of all kinds of technologies,” said Pablo Demarco, commercial director of the Chilean energy brokerage Plataforma Energía.But without offering the direct subsidies other governments use to influence what comes online or investing in technological development, Chile’s government has to hope its open market approach will help it continue to reach its clean energy goals.First, the sun does not shine at night, but a new scam in Germany ignores nature and shines a spotlight powered by a diesel engine to keep the subsidy money coming. More importantly, whenever any wind or solar are added to the grid because of intermittency these non renewable so called renewables must be connected to a coal or natural gas or oil plant to ensure reliable electricity production 7/24.As result there is a paradox the more wind and solar added to the grid the greater risk of becoming victims of their own success from their intermittency. This insight more than anything else explains the failures in Texas.In Chile's Atacama Desert, a cautionary tale for bold renewable energy vowsFull story below.Green policy gone mad as the trees are truly an asset for the environment and the climate. Virtue signally in Korea to stay up with the fraudulent Parid Accord.See research study -The renewable energy policy ParadoxJorge Blazqueza , Rolando Fuentes-Bracamontesa,⁎ , Carlo Andrea Bollinob , Nora Nezamuddina a King Abdullah Petroleum and Research Center (KAPSARC), Saudi Arabia b University of Perugia, Italy and King Abdullah Petroleum and Research Center (KAPSARC), Saudi Arabia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Electricity reform Renewable policy Integration Liberalized marketsABSTRACTOne major avenue for policymakers to meet climate targets is by decarbonizing the power sector, one component of which is raising the share of renewable energy sources (renewables) in electricity generation. However, promoting renewables –in liberalized power markets– creates a paradox in that successful penetration of renewables could fall victim to its own success. With the current market architecture, future deployment of renewable energy will necessarily be more costly and less scalable. Moreover, transition towards a full 100% renewable electricity sector is unattainable. Paradoxically, in order for renewable technologies to continue growing their market share, they need to co-exist with fossil fuel technologies. Ignoring these findings can slow adoption and increase the costs of deploying new renewable technologies. This paper spots the incompatibility between electricity liberalization and renewable policy, regardless of the country, location or renewable technologies. The Paradox holds as long as market clear prices with short term marginal costs, and renewable technology's marginal cost is close to zero and not dispatchable.https://daneshyari.com/article/preview/5481847.pdfSolar panels are very sensitive and easily damaged or rendered useless by severe weather. Think about that we have a so called severe weather climate crisis and our answer is technology that does not work in severe weather? Duh…Sand destroys solar panels so the desert is sunny but not a great location.“Solar panels are composed of photovoltaic (PV) cells that convert sunlight to electricity. When these panels enter landfills, valuable resources go to waste. And because solar panels contain toxic materials like lead that can leach out as they break down, landfilling also creates new environmental hazards.Aug. 22, 2020.”Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash | WIREDThink about this fact - there are many thousands of coal plants in the world and yes some are being shuttered, but more a being built as many as three per week mostly by China. Yet not one, I repeat not one of the shuttered plants has been replaced by any wind or solar equivalent stand alone power plant! Also when a shuttered coal plant land is used for solar the low output of solar compared with the shuttered coal plant is mind boggling. Here is a spot on example.APRIL 8, 2019Canadian Coal-Fired Power Plant Transformed into Solar FarmThe 44-MW Nanticoke Solar Farm in Ontario. ONTARIO POWER GENERATIONWhat was once the largest coal-fired power plant in North America has been converted to a 44-megawatt solar farm with 192,431 photovoltaic panels spread across 260 acres, the electric utility Ontario Power Generation announced.Look at the math Nanitoke solar produced 44 MW while it replaced Nanitoke Coal the produced 100 times as much. At full capacity, Nanitoke station could provide 3,964 MW of power into the southern Ontario power grid. At full capacity (4000 MW) with all eight generating units functioning, the station's annual electricity production had been as high as 24 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), enough electricity to run nearly 2.5 million households.[1] W.The numbers do not lie solar is tepid and takes up too much land.Why, because wind and solar cannot stand alone and yet the Biden policy is to rely on them to replace fossil fuel power plants completely. This plan to dump fossil fuels without a reliable alternative is very dangerous and costly. wind and solar cannot keep the lights on 7/24 and in hospitals this failure will lead to loss of life.When the media ignore the added cost of hooking up and running fossil fuels 7/24 often coal power as back up this is obviously costly and inefficient. The heart of the matter is that solar does not have reliable, robust independent battery storage for the bake in intermittency forever. The result is adding solars boosts the consumer cost of electricity often by more than 50% . Ignoring this back up storage issue amounts to fraud by solar companies. Further ignoring the fact that snow covered solar panels produce no electricity the same for panels covered in pigeon pooh.Coal to the rescue.Berlin On The Brink! Winter Blackouts Loom As Coal Plants Run At 100% Capacity, Struggle To Keep Lights On InBy P Gosselin on 28. January 2021Wintertime wind and solar energy “between 0 and 2 or 3 percent – that is de facto zero,” says German power distribution professor.Berlin’s power supply severely strainedGermany now finds itself in the dead of winter. Much of the country has seen considerable snowfall, meaning solar panels are often covered by snow and thus rendered useless. Even without snow cover, the weeks-long overcast sky prevents any noteworthy solar power generation.Moreover, this winter there have been many long windless periods, and so Germany’s approx. 30,000 wind turbines have been largely out of operation. In a world 100% reliant on green energies, this would mean near 100% darkness at home.Green energies will not keep pace with demandNext in the report, RBB interviews Harald Schwarz, professor of power distribution at the University of Cottbus, who tells RBB he’s very skeptical of wind and solar energy doing the job. As Germany moves to shut down its reliable nuclear and coal power plants, the gap between supply and demand will grow dangerously wide.Physical reality “totally neglected” by policymakersAccording to Prof. Schwarz:With this supply of wind and photovoltaic energy, it’s between 0 and 2 or 3 percent – that is de facto zero. You can see it in many diagrams that we have days, weeks, in the year where we have neither wind nor PV. Especially this time for example – there is no wind and PV, and there are often times when the wind is very miniscule. These are things, I must say, that have been physically established and known for centuries, and we’ve simply totally neglected this during the green energies discussion.”Will have to rely on foreign energy in the futureRBB then warns of the increased odds of blackouts for the region, like the blackout in Berlin in 2019.So what will happen in the future?The reporter says the plan is that Germany will have to rely more on natural gas (from Russia), coal power from Poland and nuclear power from France.Green energy dumbness and obstinance on full public display.Berlin On The Brink! Winter Blackouts Loom As Coal Plants Run At 100% Capacity, Struggle To Keep Lights On In“…The calculated snow load of a solar panel is approximately 800 lbs/panel (50 lbs/sq ft x 16 sq ft avg. panel). In the snowier areas of the country, that’s a wonderful thing, but it also comes with a caveat.The incredibly heavy accumulated mass will eventually release and come barreling off like an avalanche, and when that happens, gutters are sometimes ripped off, shrubs are often flattened and destroyed and cars and other items in yards and driveways can be seriously damaged. These avalanches can damage expensive landscaping, parked vehicles, grills, gutters, plumbing vents and more — but even worse, they can harm people and animals in the surrounding areas.”Do you need a solar snow management system? | Solar BuilderWhat Is The Effect Of Bird Droppings On Solar Panels?The true impact of bird droppings on solar panels, whilst not the most romantic subject, needs to be discussed. Are bird droppings really that much of a problem for solar panels? The solar industry in the UK has been maturing for over 5 years now and some harsh lessons been learned. The early days were consumed with feed-in tariffs and installing bigger, better and more challenging solar arrays. Watching all of this from above, have been the birds and they have been loving it, as you can see!The fact is that solar panels have become a modern haven for small families of pigeons living under residential arrays. But roofs and water are attractive to huge colonies of seagulls and migratory birds who find warmth, shelter and ideal nesting areas. Nesting areas mean massive bird dropping problems where solar panels are present. It is not an issue that we can not goosestep around.Bird droppings on solar panels are an all too often an underestimated and overlooked problem.The Effects Of Bird Droppings Solar Panels - The Harsh RealityCoal power is on the rise in China and by China -“How many coal power plants are being built in China?In addition to roughly 1,000 gigawatts of existing coal capacity, China has 121 gigawatts of coal plants under construction, which is more than is being built in the rest of the world combined.”China Is Still Building an Insane Number of New Coal PlantsChina’s largest coal power plants lagging in response to climate risks, says new studyCompared to their global and regional counterparts, China’s coal giants have no clear strategies in transitioning to clean energy, despite government mandates on capping coal use, a Singapore-based consultancy firm found.Shenhua Jiujiang Power Plant in Jiangxi, China. Power company China Shenhua Energy is almost exclusively coal-based and has not added wind or solar to its generation mix. Image: Sepco No 3, Power Plants Around the World Facebook pageBy Hannah Alcoseba FernandezOct. 9, 2019The energy density advantage of fossil fuels and the intermittency of wind and solar ensure they have a dim future. The idea of 100% replacement of fossil fuels is so far off the mark that it is laughable. This photo is the future of wind connected at the hip to coal power to survive.Wind turbines in Europe, with a coal power plant in the distance. Ina Fassbender/ReutersSolar power has proven an abject failure as an alternative to fossil fuels, notwithstanding massive subsidies world wide. Wind and solar cannot provide electricity without the assistance of fossil fuels as back up to cover for intermittency.Solar farms subsidies in the UK exceed the value of the electricity they produce.Fossil fuels are here to stay and energy markets ignore wind and solar making the vast government subsidies a vast waste.Warren Buffet is right the only reason to invest in these renewables are the government subsidies. They have no market based future. In fact the more renewable added to the existing system the higher is the cost of electricity causing terrible heat poverty and loss of life when people are forced to choose heat or eat.Gwyn Morgan: Liberals’ plan to replace fossil fuel with wind and solar is technically impossible and economically disastrousTrying to solve any problem with a fix that defies the laws of physics is bound to failAuthor of the article:Gwyn Morgan, Special to Financial PostPublishing date:Oct 27, 2020 • October 27, 2020 • 4 minute readSheep graze close to wind turbines in the German town of Husum. Germans know the hazards of pursuing a green power utopia all too well. PHOTO BY JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/GETTY IMAGESThe combination of wildfires along the U.S. Pacific Coast, two simultaneous hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, melting glaciers and peat bog fires in Canada and an unusually hot summer in Europe has raised global warming fears to frenzied proportions. Environmentalists are urging political leaders to legislate the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels. Curiously, the most extreme call for action came from the future King of England. Prince Charles urged a “warlike footing” that would require the implementation of a centralized global authority to save the planet from catastrophic climate change. Just how such an unelected regime would exert power over the Earth’s 7.8 billion inhabitants wasn’t clear.If Canada were to disappear from the face of the Earth, new coal plants would replace our 1.6% of global emissions in just a few monthsThe California and Oregon wildfires turned into a U.S. election issue, with Joe Biden pointing to Donald Trump’s pro-oil industry policies as a cause — even though American greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by over 14 per cent since 2005. Meanwhile, led by China and India, Asian emissions have doubled over the past decade and continue to grow. Overall, less than a third of global emissions now come from Western developed countries. China, India, Vietnam, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, all signatories to the Paris Climate Accord, are in various stages of constructing a total of 1,800 coal-fired power plants. If Canada were to disappear from the face of the Earth, those new plants would replace our 1.6 per cent of global emissions in just a few months.Despite that reality, the Trudeau government continues its ideologically driven crusade to replace fossil fuels with so-called green energy, mainly wind and solar. The government’s throne speech virtually ignored the economic destitution its anti-oil policies have wrought in Alberta. Even the potential market access of Trans Mountain Pipeline was couched in terms of providing a bridge to a fossil-fuel free paradise.That green energy fixation was the focus of the Sept. 26 “Climate Issue” of the Globe and Mail. Columnist David Berman asserted that the cost of wind and solar power have “become attractive next to fossil fuels generating assets, particularly coal.” As evidence, he cited Tucson Electric Power’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation. U.S. Energy Administration data show that coal-fired plants are indeed being phased out, but they’re being replaced by natural gas. In fact, wind and solar provide less than one per cent of Arizona’s electricity requirements.Gwyn Morgan: After deliberately turning itself into a climate-change martyr, Canada needs some basic common senseFellow columnist Eric Reguly stated that Canada’s share of renewables — i.e., hydro, wind, biomass, solar and ethanol — is above the OECD average. But as is often the case with selective fact statements from green power advocates, he fails to mention that Natural Resources Canada data show wind and solar accounting for just 2.3 per cent per cent of Canada’s electricity supply in 2019.The widely respected BP World Energy Outlook 2019 shows that, despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested, wind and solar contributed the same two per cent of world energy supplies, while the contribution of fossil fuels has actually increased to 84 per cent.Germans know the hazards of pursuing a green power utopia all too well. Their country’s decade-long attempt to replace coal and nuclear with wind and solar sent electricity costs soaring to the second highest in the EU. Despite hundreds of billions of Euros invested, the unreliability of wind and solar necessitated rehabilitating coal-fired power plants. In an ironic twist, the coal is sourced from the U.S. and is available only because of the conversion of American power plants to natural gas.Ontario’s McGuinty government also implemented a German-style green power and with equally disastrous results. Coal-fired power plants were shuttered and the planned expansion of nuclear plants cancelled. The government signed 25-year locked-in windmill and solar contracts at several times existing rates. Electricity prices more than doubled, taking Ontario from one of North America’s lowest-cost power jurisdictions to among the highest, with prices more than twice those in other provinces. As beleaguered homeowners struggled to pay their electricity bills, manufacturers decamped to low-cost states like Georgia and the Carolinas. Caterpillar, United Steel, Heinz, General Motors, Navistar, Kellogg’s, John Deere, Kraft Foods, Unilever and Bacardi closed some or all of their Ontario plants.Then there’s the impact on the land. More than 8,000 wind turbines were built, requiring three acres each on average. Many are near bird habitats, causing locals to label them “bird blenders.” And that’s only part of the story. Because (surprise!) the wind blows irregularly and solar panels are useless during Ontario’s long, dark winter nights, several new natural gas-fired power plants were needed to back up those unreliable wind and solar facilities, pushing power prices even higher. The only winners from this made-in-Ontario fiasco were the so-called “green-preneurs,” who became very wealthy as a result of those locked-in power contracts.The moral of this sad story is that the Liberals’ plan to replace fossil fuel with wind and solar is technically impossible and economically disastrous. Moreover, phasing out the oilsands would simply hand the market to such sterling global citizens as Russia and Iran, even as it threw more than a million Canadians out of work and destroyed the country’s largest source of wealth generation and export revenues — all at a time when that wealth generation is needed more than ever.Trying to solve any problem with a fix that defies the laws of physics is bound to fail. What can Canada actually do to reduce global emissions and help the economy? That, dear readers, will be the subject of next month’s column.Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who has been a director of five global corporations.Bill Gates Slams Unreliable Wind & Solar: ‘Let’s Quit Jerking Around With Renewables & Batteries’February 18, 2019 by stopthesethings 41 CommentsBill says it’s time to stop jerking around with wind & solar.When the world’s richest entrepreneur says wind and solar will never work, it’s probably time to listen.Bill Gates made a fortune applying common sense to the untapped market of home computing. The meme has it that IBM’s CEO believed there was only a market for five computers in the entire world. Gates thought otherwise. Building a better system than any of his rivals and shrewdly working the marketplace, resulted in hundreds of millions hooked on PCs, Windows and Office. This is a man that knows a thing or two about systems and a lot about what it takes to satisfy the market.For almost a century, electricity generation and distribution were treated as a tightly integrated system: it was designed and built as one, and is meant to operate as designed. However, the chaotic delivery of wind and solar have all but trashed the electricity generation and delivery system, as we know it. Germany and South Australia are only the most obvious examples.During an interview at Stanford University late last year, Bill Gates attacks the idiots who believe that we’re all just a heartbeat away from an all wind and sun powered future.Gates on renewables: How would Tokyo survive a 3 day typhoon with unreliable energy?Jo Nova BlogJo Nova14 February 2019Make no mistake, Bill Gates totally believes the climate change scare story but even he can see that renewables are not the answer, it’s not about the cost, it’s the reliability.He quotes Vaclav Smil:Here’s Toyko, 2p7 million people, you have three days of a cyclone every year. It’s 23GW of electricity for three days. Tell me what battery solution is going sit there and provide that power.As Gates says: Let’s not jerk around. You’re multiple orders of magnitude — … — That’s nothing, that doesn’t solve the reliability problem.Bill Gates Slams Unreliable Wind & Solar: ‘Let’s Quit Jerking Around With Renewables & Batteries’“…the green madness that’s threatening our ability to turn on the lights and air conditioners is being exposed as a socialist policy-driven, big government debacle…”Jamie SpryThe best renewable energy is hydro and nuclear power, but they are limited by negative public opinion.RENEWABLE ENERGYIs unreliable and will not become a significant energy source compared to fossil fuels especially coal that is on the rebound with many power plants being financed and built by China.“Don’t Bank On Solar Power In Winter!Posted: December 12, 2017 | Author: Jamie Spry | Filed under: BIG Government, | 1 Comment“…for the last month, solar power has been running at a tiny 4% of its capacity, with many days well below this.”Unreliables. Enough said.NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THATBy Paul Homewood“Wait till the Health & Safety Stasi see this!“The renewable lobby would like you to believe that solar power is an important part of our future energy strategy.But they don’t tell you just how little power is produced during winter months, at the time when demand is at its peak.”Search Results for “solar power” – ClimatismUNRELIABLE Energy – Wind and Solar – A Climate Of CommunismPosted: October 16, 2017 | Author: Jamie Spry | Filed under: Agenda 21, Australia,|3 CommentsGreen is the new red.“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers***Reviews of Bill Gates recent book are critical saying -“One looks in vain for Gates to assess the actual evidence to date regarding the experience of countries and states that have done precisely that, “forcing an unnaturally speedy transition”, such as Germany, California and South Australia. There is no attention paid to the deleterious impacts of shutting down coal and natural gas plants on electricity prices (Germany for instance has among the world’s highest household prices for electricity), grid stability (with California now entertaining regular rolling blackouts as the norm caused by green energy regulations) and energy poverty in rich countries such as the UK. Nor does Gates find it necessary to engage with substantive arguments in well-researched published work by well-known environmental sceptics such Bjorn Lomborg (who recently published “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet”) and Michael Schellenberger (the best-selling author of “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All”).Either Gates is not aware or finds it inconvenient that the very authorities he consults with hold views at odds with the assertions made throughout the book. Vaclav Smil, the widely-respected energy scholar praised by Bill Gates (among others), concluded that it would take 25-50% of all land in the US to go 100% renewable, a practical impossibility. Today, the US uses just 0.5% of its land for energy. In 2009, David MacKay, another leading authority on energy technologies that Gates cites favourably in the book, showed that providing all the UK’s energy with 100% renewables would require a greater area than the landmass of the entire country, an “appalling delusion” as he called it. How To Avoid Climate Disaster The Bill Gates WayCalifornia’s Climate ContradictionsNew evidence that green policies punish the poor and subsidize the rich.ByThe Editorial BoardFeb. 26, 2021 6:26 pm ETSolar panels on rooftops of a housing development in Folsom, Calif., Feb. 12, 2020.PHOTO: RICH PEDRONCELLI/ASSOCIATED PRESSThe contradictions of green energy policies are becoming more obvious in the real world, and now comes more evidence in a new study of California’s electricity rates. The policies even contradict green climate goals.“California has charted an ambitious course towards decarbonizing its economy,” the study by nonprofit Next 10 and the University of California, Berkeley Energy Institute at Haas declares. “At the same time, California has among the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S. These two facts create a tension: decarbonizing the economy most likely requires electrification of transportation and space and water heating, but high prices push against such a transition. High prices also have troubling implications for equity and affordability.”No kidding. California’s myriad green-energy subsidies and mandates are baked into rates, which are now about 80% higher in northern California than the national average and twice as high in San Diego.The state requires renewables like wind and solar to make up 60% of electricity generation by 2030. The study says renewable prices (albeit with subsidies) are now roughly the same as other power sources, but utilities signed long-term contracts with solar and wind producers years ago when prices were higher. Utilities also need backup power when it’s cloudy, which adds costs. Yet the state sometimes has to pay Arizona to take its excess solar power to avoid overloading the grid.And here’s the kicker: Folks with solar panels get paid for surplus power they don’t use—sometimes at two to three times the rate of wholesale power. So California pays the well-to-do to generate solar power it doesn’t need and then pays Arizona to take it.We’ve written for years that state “net-metering” programs shift the grid’s fixed costs to low- and middle-income people without solar panels. The Next 10 study estimates that this cost shift translates into $230 more for an average annual electric bill and $124 for lower-income customers with subsidized rates in San Diego.Yet 25% to 30% of all residential electricity is discounted for low-income customers, and “the cost of this subsidy is borne by all other customers,” the study says. In other words, the middle class ends up financing rate subsidies for the poor aimed at ameliorating the higher costs of solar subsidies for the well-to-do. California’s cap-and-trade program and utility “public purpose programs” like battery subsidies add several more cents per kilowatt hour.The study concludes that the state’s electric rates are so regressive that they could discourage people from buying electric vehicles and electrifying their homes by replacing gas-fueled appliances. Instead of raising electric rates, the study suggests making policies more progressive by increasing income taxes to promote its climate goals. So subsidize the rich, then tax them more.This is especially hilarious since Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento leaned on utilities to finance their climate spending so they wouldn’t have to divert general fund revenues from social welfare. But the poor are being punished nonetheless.Opinion | California’s Climate Contradictions

Unlike his predecessors the kinds of Lalus, Paswans and Mamta, Mr Suresh Prabhu is a highly professional, a farsighted and he means the business. The earlier railway budgets were often framed by and large to serve the political constituencies of the ministers and their parties, the railway was burdened with huge wastage and financial burden for the vested interests of these ministers, whereas Mr Suresh Prabhu has been sincerely trying to bring the railways back on the track, and transform it to the requirements and need of modern India, meeting the aspirations of citizens of the the vibrant India.As rightly expressed by Mr Suresh Prabhu in his budget speach, this railway budget reflects the aspirations of the whole railway fraternity, the people of India, the modern India, the vibrant India, an India moving faster and stronger.Highlights of Railway Budget for 2016-17(Ref :Cogencis, Thursday, Feb 25)Following are highlights of the Railway Budget for 2016-17(Apr-Mar), presented by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in Parliament today:GENERAL* Budget reflects aspirations of the entire railway family* Rail Budget reflects aspiration of all.* Core objective is to improve individual experience* Rail Budget is the vision of PM Modi* Making all efforts to turn PM's vision into reality* Railways facing headwinds on tepid economic growth* Railways have stood the test of time* Need to overhaul Railways' work culture* Need to bring in new approach* Will lay out three pillars of strategy* Looking at new areas for generating revenues* Need to reorganise, rejuvenate, restructure railways* Railways facing headwinds from 7th pay panel burden* Will engage with global agencies for funds* Absolute deductions planned in expenses such as diesel* Have significantly reduced cost of power procurement* Will revisit all rules, structures to overhaul railways* To improve procurement practises at par with international norms* New revenues through changes in freight policies* Punctuality has gone up to almost 95%* To include implementation reports in Budget* Carry 23 mln passengers every day* Special teams to screen railway operations* To introduce 33% quota for women passengersFY17 ESTIMATES* FY17 investment seen at 1.21 trln rupees* Investment rate of capex has increased substantially* FY17 capital expenditure seen 1.2 trln rupees* FY17 revenue seen 1.84 trln rupees* Capex to grow exponentially* Ramped up capex in FY17* FY17 operating ratio seen 92%* Increasing rigour on cost optimisation in FY17* Freight's contribution to earnings seen 67%* FY17 gross budgetary support seen 400 bln rupees* 44 new projects planned FY17 worth 927 bln rupeesFY16 REVISED* 87.2 bln rupees saved from last year budget estimate* FY16 operating ratio seen 90%* FY16 loss from subsidising passenger fares seen 300 bln rupee* Saving from previous Budget estimates 787 bln rupeesINFRASTRUCTURE, MODERNISATION* To be at forefront of infrastructure growth* Railways will be at forefront of infra growth* To generate employment for 90 mln man days by FY18* To commission broad gauge lines at 7 km/day FY17* FY17 track commissioning aim 2,800 km* Aim to have zero direct discharge of human waste by 2020* Reserved accommodation to be available on demand by 2020* Aim 80 km/hour avg speed of express train by 2020* Freight speed seen at 50 km/hr by 2020* To eliminate all unmanned level crossings by 2020* Taken action on 139 Budget announcements made last yr* To run semi high-speed trains on Golden Quadrilateral by 2020* Action initiated on 139 FY16 Rail Budget announcements* To meet reservation on demand by 2020* Will take a zero-based budgeting approach* To take zero-base budgetary approach for freight* To conduct recruitment online* To set up Margao, Hazira ports FY17 via PPP* To spend 8.5 trln rupees over 5 yrs to modernise rail infra* To hasten electrification of railways working with Power Min* To build more dedicated freight corridors* To up FY17 allocation for electrification by 50%* To generate employment of 140 mln man-days in 2018-19* 65,000 additional berths generated in FY16* Taken steps to significantly improve svcs for rail passengers* Dedicated IVRS system receiving over mln feedback calls daily* Set up mechanism to get direct feedback from customers* Responsiveness to customer needs touched new heights this yr* Initiated IT-based internal audit* Signed MoUs with some zonal railways* To move to contract award system online in FY17* Social media being used as a tool to bring transparency* Mission to ensure transparent bidding process* To set up 2 loco units with 480 bln rupee invest* To set up new loco units with order book of 400 bln rupees* Aim to have 100 WiFi-enabled stations this yr, 400 in next 3* To redevelop stations by different models* Finalised 2 locomotive factories bids under 'Make In India'* E-ticket capacity 7,000 tickets/minute now vs 2,000 earlier* Introduced 1,780 automatic ticket vending machines* Initiated capacity augmentation on some busy routes* Developed application to maintain centralised land data* To open cashless ticketing facilities for foreigners in 3 mos* To introduce tickets with bar codes* To introduce bar-coded tickets* To start track management system under Digital India* To introduce bar-coding of tickets at major stations* To allow cancellation of tickets via call on 139NEW TRAINS, LINES* Plan to electrify 2,000 km track in FY17* Track laying to be at 13km/day in FY18, 19km/day in FY19* North-South dedicated freight corridors in Delhi-Chennai* Plan Kharagpur-Vijaywada freight corridor* Plan Mumbai-Kharagpur freight corridor* Decongestion on Jalandhar-Jammu line going on* To put 3 freight corridor projects on high priority* Mizoram, Manipur to come under broad gauge network soon* To launch long distance fully unreserved Antyodaya trains* To have more unreserved passenger coaches* Proposed dedicated freight corridor for east-west, east coast* Proposed dedicated freight corridors for north-south* Overnight double-decker trains named 'Uday trains'* Overnight double-decker trains for better access on busy lineBORROWING* Will scout overseas for rupee bonds* To scout international markets for rupee bondsINVESTMENT PUSH* Secured funding from LIC at favourable terms* Bankable projects assured of funding now* LIC to invest 1.5 trln rupees over 5 years* 1 rupee invest in rail can impact econ output by factor of 5* In partnership with SAIL, NTPC, coal ministry on funding* Signed MoUs with 6 states for JVs* Got expressions from 17 states to form JVs* MoUs with zonal railways for quantifying performance* Forming JV with states for local rail projects* Availing multilateral financing for station development* Cabinet approved redevelopment of 400 stations via PPP model* Bidding process in advanced stage to redevelop 4 stations* To undertake bidding to redevelop some big stations next yr* Bankable railway projects to be completed in 3-4 yearsMISCELLANEOUS* To raise quota of lower berth for women, senior citizens* To build additional toilets in 475 stations before FY16 end* Aim 17,000 bio-toilets before FY16 end* Initiated audit for punctuality of passenger trains* Disposable bed rolls at all stations for all classes* 311 railway stations currently under CCTV surveillance* All stations to have CCTV surveillance in phased manner* Anti-falling measures in suburban coaches* To eliminate accidents by adopting latest technology* Entered into R&D pacts with Korea, Japan to improve ops* All railway stations to be under CCTV surveillance in phases* Supporting 120,000 concurrent users now vs 40,000 earlier* Installed CCTV cameras at 311 stations* To introduce 'Deen Dayalu' coaches* Every customer a brand ambassador for railways* To upgrade Baroda rail institute to full fledged university* Working on implementing Kakodkar panel report on safety* To have Hamsafar, Tejas, Uday coaches for reserved passengers* Tajas speed to be 130 km/hour* Deen Dayalu coaches for unreserved passengers for long travel* To add 2 or 4 more unreserved coaches in long distance trains* New catering policy for multipurpose stalls at stations* To extend e-catering services to all 408 A1, A2 stations* IRCTC to introduce local cuisines available on demand* To make local cuisine available on demand on trains* IRCTC to unbundle catering services* Set up Swachh Rail waste aggregation and recycling centre* To install 30,000 bio-toilets at stations* To start Clean-My-Coach service on pan-India basis* To introduce CCTV coverage at all Tatkal counters