Varied interests in the energy and power sector viz., CDM, carbon rating, Monitoring & Evaluation, Energy Management, Rural Development; Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy related matters; Demand Side Management (DSM), Energy Audits, Distributed Power Generation (Biomass, Wind,Solar and Small Hydro), Participatory Management.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

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Bollywood atlast joins hands to light up villages!

Bollywood join hands to light up villages Reuters
Posted online: Thursday , July 17, 2008 at 1303 hrs

Mumbai, July 17:: Bollywood stars are teaming up with a renowned climate change scientist to help brighten the lives of a billion people through a project that aims to provide 200,000 villages with electricity for the first time.

Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan and others from the Indian film industry will help raise money for the Lighting a Billion Lives campaign through proceeds of their "Unforgettable" concert tour of North America and Europe.

"The Indian film industry, and in particular Mr Bachchan, has a massive fan following and their involvement in such causes can be a powerful instrument for social transformation," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told Reuters in an email.

Revenues from the Bollywood tour, which starts in Toronto this Friday, would help provide electric lanterns to some 100 villages, he added.

By February, the campaign, an initiative of The Energy and Resources Institute which Pachauri heads, aims to replace hazardous kerosene and paraffin lanterns with solar-powered devices in 200,000 villages in India, Pakistan, Maldives, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, Malawi and Cambodia.

"This will facilitate education of children; provide better illumination and a kerosene-smoke-free indoor environment," the campaign website (http://labl.teriin.org/) said.

Pachauri, whose panel shared the Nobel peace prize last year with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said at least 1.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to electricity, and that 25 percent of them were in India.

For Bollywood stars such as Preity Zinta, contributing to the campaign is one of the perks of being a celebrity.

"You go out there because you get paid for it, because it's your job. But to make something like this part of your job, it just makes you feel good about your karma," the 33-year-old actress said. "It doesn't take too much money to light a village."

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Gopinath S
Bangalore
9180 2669 8211
+91 99161 29728

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