India ranks ninth overall on Ernst and Young LLP's most recent renewables attractiveness Index. Though solar energy has received much attention from the government, this article takes a look at how the nation has fared in other renewable energies important for environment sustainability.

Atria Power Ltd.'s Multi Utility Solar Thermal (MUST) system, which is expected to be set up at Bagepalli, Chikkaballapur district, Karnataka, will be a unique poly-generation unit, producing electrical power and potable water. It will also support a cold storage unit.

IH2® is a waste-to-energy technology which converts a broad range of residues, including sorted municipal waste (up to 20% plastic content), agricultural residues to gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel-range hydrocarbon fuels. CSTEP performed the resource and impact assessment for large scale deployment IH2®. We estimated the agro-residues (for 10 states) and municipal solid waste (for 42 major cities) to examine the potential for adoption of IH2® technology.

A thermo-economic evaluation of a steam Rankine cycle and an ORC for similar operation conditions and power outputs suggests the promise of organic working fluids for high temperature ORCs. Key conclusions are:

1. The thermal efficiency of steam Rankine is only marginally better than that of the ORC.

This study evaluates options for deployment configurations of current CSP technologies that may decrease the LCOE or exploit other attributes of the technology that could make it a more attractive investment in India (e.g., shift the time of availability).

• Solar field area & storage capacity was varied to assess impact on techno-economic performance of the two solar technologies.

• PV yielded a minimum LCOE of 0.12 USD/kWh and a CUF of 0.27.

• s-ORC yielded a minimum LCOE of 0.19 USD/kWh, with a CUF of 0.56.

The link between rising levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and changing climatic patterns was first definitively put forth in 1898 by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist. In the decades since Arrhenius, climate science has developed considerably, establishing with even greater conviction that climate change is closely connected to anthropogenic GHG emissions. As a result, there is a growing global awareness of the importance of reducing emissions in an effort to mitigate climate change.

Innovations in collection, analyses and visualisation of data are opening new frontiers in the way we understand cities. This includes data from both government and non-government sources, such as the vast amount of geospatial data collected by cab aggregators, mobile service providers, social media, etc. Crowdsourced data is emerging as a powerful tool for not only researchers and city officials in city planning and disaster response but also for citizens in enhancing their claim-making capabilities.

Cities are engines of growth, and it has been widely acknowledged that 'data is the new oil', essential to sustainably develop and efficiently manage cities. Urban data, especially spatially and temporally disaggregated, is a key to tracking the liveability and sustainability challenges faced by cities. The application of data science and technology can enable effective structuring of various data sets to tackle such urban challenges. The data thus captured can be used for finding solutions to urban challenges in a cost and time efficient manner.

Can we harness the power of technology and community to resolve these challenges? How would such a system shape up?

These are the questions at the heart of the Spatial Data System for the Inclusive Cities Agenda in India project, being implemented by Information Technology for Change (ITfC), AVAS and the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP).