GS- 3 Paper
Topics covered– Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.
State Rooftop Solar Attractiveness Index (SARAL)
Context
Power Minister launched SARAL – ‘State Rooftop Solar Attractiveness Index’ during RPM Meeting.
About SARAL Index
- The SARAL Index is to evaluate Indian states based on their attractiveness for rooftop development.
- It is the first of its kind index to provide a comprehensive overview of state-level measures adopted to facilitate rooftop solar deployment.
- Karnataka has been placed at the first rank in the index.
- Telangana, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh are placed 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the Index respectively.
- SARAL has been designed collaboratively by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation (SSEF), Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and Ernst & Young (EY).
Key aspect of the Index
- SARAL currently captures five key aspects –
- Robustness of policy framework
- Implementation environment
- Investment climate
- Consumer experience
- Business ecosystem
Need for the Index
- To achieve our rooftop solar targets, it is important to develop an ecosystem that ensures information symmetry, access to financing and clear market signals.
- Thus, the MNRE has developed the State Rooftop Solar Attractiveness Index–SARAL that evaluates.
Significance
- It encourages each state to assess the initiatives taken so far, and what it can do to improve its solar rooftop ecosystem.
- This will help states to channelize investments that can eventually help the sector grow.
- In addition, such an exercise is likely to create a more conducive environment for solar rooftop installations, encourage investment and lead to accelerated growth of the sector.
Rooftop solar
- Rooftop solar installations are different from large-scale solar power generation plants.
- Rooftop solar can be installed on the roofs of buildings.
- It provides of an alternative source of electricity to the companies and residential areas.
- It reduces the dependence on fossil-fuel generated electricity.
- Rooftop solar are able to provide electricity to those areas that are not yet connected to the grid , such as, remote locations and areas where it is difficult to set up power stations and lay power lines.
GS- 2 Paper
Topics covered– Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
WTO reforms
Context
WTO reforms must be taken up by all member countries: Commerce & Industry Minister addresses the South-South and Triangular Cooperation.
Relevance of WTO
- WTO administers existing multilateral trade agreements, such as Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement.
- It settles disputes among its members through its Dispute Settlement Mechanism.
- It serves as a platform and manager for negotiations on new global trade agreements.
- WTO ensures that global trade is based on universal rules suited to and accepted across the world.
- It stimulates global growth by removing trade barriers.
- It provides more markets to world’s resources thus stimulating global growth.
- WTO functions as an arbitrator between warring countries and aims at building commonality in policies and practices.
- WTO ensures predictability in trade prospects and trade-related regulations through its binding provisions and ensures transparency in trade practices.
- It supports least developed and developing countries and smaller countries by providing immediate access to developed markets at lower tariff rate.
- WTO allows members to enter into preferential trade agreements and free trade agreements to ensure better coordination among selected members.
The challenges faced by WTO
- WTO is facing existential crisis during a time when developed economies have adopted protectionist attitude.
- US have blocked appointments of Appellate Body members to force WTO members to negotiate new rules that address US concerns and limit the scope for judicial overreach.
- This has de facto impeded the work of the WTO appeal mechanism.
- Dispute settlement cases continue to be filed for the time being and are being litigated. A civil dialogue over trade issues persists.
- With only four working members out of seven normally serving office in July 2018, the institution is under great stress.
- If it is not resolved, the Appellate Body soon will not have enough members to review cases and the vaunted WTO dispute settlement system will grind to a halt.
- Technical functioning is now wholly inadequate to meet the major challenges to the strategic relevance of the WTO in the 21st century.
- In critical areas, the WTO has neither responded, nor adapted, nor delivered.
- The powerful states are interfering and distorting the operative assumption of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/WTO.
- Agricultural and industrial subsidies have caused blockages in the system and prompted protectionist reactions in a number of WTO members.
Needs to be done
- WTO members will have to accept that a rules-based order steered by a market economy, the private sector, and competition.
- It has to launch negotiations to address the intertwined issues of agricultural subsidies and market access,.
- It must recognize and focus on food security concerns.
- It should evolve a credible trading system which requires a dispute settlement system that is accepted by all.
- GATT/WTO rules are required to keep pace with changes in the market and technology.
For Prelims-
South-South and Triangular Cooperation
Context
Commerce & Industry Minister addresses the South-South and Triangular Cooperation.
About
- South-South cooperation refers to the exchange of expertise between actors (governments, organizations and individuals) in developing countries
- It is a broad framework of collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains.
- Involving two or more developing countries, it can take place on a bilateral, regional, intraregional, or interregional basis.
- South-South cooperation is a manifestation of solidarity among peoples and countries of the South and the attainment of the goals of Sustainable Development.
- Triangular cooperation is collaboration in which traditional donor countries and multilateral organizations facilitate South-South initiatives through the provision of funding, training, management and technological systems as well as other forms of support.
Objectives of South-South Cooperation
The basic objectives of South-South collaboration, according to the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries are to-
- Foster the self-reliance of developing countries by enhancing their creative capacity to find solutions to their development problems in keeping with their own aspirations, values and specif needs;
- Promote and strengthen collective self-reliance among developing countries and the development of their complementary capacities;
- Strengthen the capacity of developing countries to identify and analyse together their main development issues and formulate the requisite strategies to address them;
- Increase the quantity and enhance the quality of international development cooperation through the pooling of capacities to improve the effectiveness of the resources devoted to such cooperation;
- Create and strengthen existing technological capacities in the developing countries in order to improve the effectiveness with which such capacities are used and to improve the capacity of developing countries to absorb and adapt technology and skills to meet their specific developmental needs;
- Increase and improve communications among developing countries, leading to a greater awareness of common problems and wider access to available knowledge and experience;
- Recognize and respond to the problems and requirements of the least developed countries, and the countries most seriously affected by, for example, natural disasters and other crises;
- Enable developing countries to achieve a greater degree of participation in international economic activities and to expand international cooperation for development.
Ocean energy declared as Renewable Energy
Context
In order to boost to the ocean energy in India, Union Minister of State for Power and New & Renewable Energy (IC) approved a proposal to declare ocean energy as Renewable Energy.
About
- The energy produced using various forms of ocean energy such as tidal, wave, ocean thermal energy conversion shall be considered as Renewable Energy.
- It shall be eligible for meeting the non-solar Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO).
- Oceans cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface, making them the world’s largest solar collectors.
- The ocean produces two types of energy, i.e. thermal energy from the sun’s heat, and mechanical energy from the tides and waves.
- These energies are non-polluting, reliable, and very predictable.
- Tidal Energy is one of the forms of hydropower energy that exercises energy of the oceanic tides to generate electricity.
- Tidal energy uses the ebb and flow of the tides for energy production.
- Ocean wave energy uses the power of the waves to generate electricity.
- Ocean wave energy uses the vertical movement of the surface water that produces tidal waves.
- Ocean thermal energy is produced when sun’s heat warms the surface water a lot more than the deep ocean water, and this temperature difference creates thermal energy.
- Ocean current energy ocean currents under the surface are comparable to the wind above it.
- Osmotic energy produces energy from the movement of water across a membrane between a saltwater reservoir and freshwater reservoir.
