Punjab, known as the ‘Granary of India’, is among the top three producers of food grain in the country, with over 11 million tonnes of rice and 16 million tonnes of wheat produced every year. The state relies heavily on the rice–wheat cropping pattern, wherein rice is cultivated during the kharif (summer) season and wheat during the rabi (winter) season. These two crops occupy over 80% of Punjab’s total cropped area. To handle this large-scale crop harvesting, farmers have transitioned to using mechanical harvesters, leaving stubble on the ground.

Air quality can be improved through well-designed air quality management plans that are effectively implemented. For this, we need to know the sources impacting a certain location; the emissions contributed by each source; the interventions that can reduce these emissions; the cost of those interventions; and once implemented, their effectiveness. The sources in question can be local (e.g., city traffic emissions), transboundary (e.g., an industry outside a city or sources in another state), or natural (e.g., desert dust or wildfires).

A social accounting matrix (SAM) can be used to estimate key macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), gross value added (GVA), material input intensity, labour and capital intensity, average savings rate, per capita income of households, etc. They can also serve as a database for more complex models like the multiplier and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models.

The Indian power sector has witnessed substantial growth in generation capacity, with 420 GW (as of May 2024) meeting the energy needs of more than 1.4 billion people. The growth has been primarily driven by policy reforms such as the Electricity Act, 2003, and efficiency improvements. However, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) predicted a night-time peak shortage of 14 GW in June 2024.

India’s urban areas are expected to house about 600 million people by 2031 and 850 million people by 2051, as per the Handbook of Urban Statistics (2016) by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. However, as per an estimate by the World Bank, about 70 per cent of the urban infrastructure needed by 2047 is yet to be built. Given this massive impending growth and infrastructure requirement, there is an urgent need for energy-efficient and sustainable building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) solutions.