Environment & Ecology GK Questions with Answers – Page 31

It grew out of a department for non-conventional energy sources created in 1982, became a full ministry in 1992 and took its present name in 2006, and India is among the very few countries in the world to have a separate ministry devoted to this sector.

Projects of this size and below fall under the small hydro programme of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, while larger schemes are handled as conventional hydro power by the Ministry of Power.

The plan set out eight missions covering solar energy, enhanced energy efficiency, sustainable habitat, water, the Himalayan ecosystem, a green India, sustainable agriculture and strategic knowledge for climate change, and every later programme in this field refers back to it.

Both are long, narrowing inlets on the coast of Gujarat, and such a shape funnels the incoming tide so that the difference between high and low water is large, which is exactly what a tidal power scheme needs; the Sundarbans coast is the other site usually named.

The Puga valley in eastern Ladakh carries hot springs and sulphur deposits and is the best studied geothermal field in the country, the heat coming from the young mountain building of the Himalaya.

Muppandal lies in the far south of the state near Kanyakumari, where the wind pushed through a break in the Western Ghats blows strongly and steadily for much of the year, and Tamil Nadu has long been among the leading wind states of the country.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel formed over millions of years from buried organic matter; the stock is fixed, so every unit burnt is gone, and it releases carbon dioxide when burnt, although less than coal for the same heat.

The mission was launched in January 2010 as one of the eight national missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, and its aim was to make solar power competitive by building capacity in stages and by supporting domestic manufacturing.

The alliance has its secretariat on the campus of the National Institute of Solar Energy at Gwal Pahari in Gurugram, and because it rests on a framework agreement among its members it is the first treaty-based international organisation to be headquartered in India.

A geothermal plant takes steam or hot water from a natural underground reservoir, whose temperature is set by the rock and rarely approaches what a furnace can produce, so both the temperature and the pressure at the turbine are well below those of a coal-fired steam plant, and the thermal…

Anthracite is the oldest and hardest grade of coal, with the highest proportion of carbon, so it gives the most heat for its weight and burns with a clean, almost smokeless flame.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in Japan in December 1997 and in force from February 2005, set binding cuts for six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride.

Section 22 of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 allows a person aggrieved by an award, order or decision of the Tribunal to appeal to the Supreme Court within ninety days of the day it is communicated, and the Court may admit a later appeal if it is satisfied that…

The National Green Tribunal was set up under the National Green Tribunal Act of 2010 to settle cases on the environment, forests, water, air and biodiversity quickly, and India thus became one of the first countries in the world to create a special court of this kind.

Haryali is a centrally sponsored watershed development project launched in 2003 by the Ministry of Rural Development, and its whole point is that the village panchayat plans and carries out the work itself.

An ocean thermal energy conversion plant works only where the warm surface water is at least about 20 degrees Celsius hotter than the cold water drawn from the depths.

Hydrofluorocarbons were adopted as substitutes for chlorofluorocarbons in refrigeration and air conditioning because they do not harm the ozone layer, but they turned out to be very powerful greenhouse gases, so the Kigali Amendment of 2016 brought them under the Montreal Protocol with a schedule for reducing their use.

The day marks the signing of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987 and is observed every year with a theme announced by the United Nations.

Marble is calcium carbonate, and sulphur dioxide in polluted air, along with the sulphuric acid of acid rain, reacts with it to form calcium sulphate, so the stone loses its shine, turns yellow and becomes pitted and flaky.

These gases come from burning coal and oil in thermal power stations, smelters and vehicles, are oxidised in the atmosphere and dissolve in water droplets to form sulphuric acid and nitric acid, which come down as acid rain.