India made its presence felt in the European Parliament in Brussels during the glittering “Energy Globe Award” ceremony April 11 with a Danish-Indian project winning one of the awards. The prize for category “Fire” went to a project for the establishment of 16,000 “solar” homes in India under the guidance of the UNEP Risoe Center and the Risoe National Laboratory Denmark and with Indian funding.

Accepting the award on behalf of the project, Jyoti Prasad Painuly said, “If we ask poor villagers to pay upfront for next 20 years of energy supply, it would be impossible to start so we arranged for bank loans.” “Today people have access to cheap energy while banks are also satisfied,” he said, adding that Seva Bank and Bank of Maharashtra are now ready to launch the same projects in Gujarat and Maharashtra.  

Handing the award to Prasad Painuly, Hollywood star Martin Sheen said, “Events like today show what can be done by citizens and NGOs.”

Presenting the award for category Earth, Indian parliamentarian and former environment minister Maneka Gandhi said, “Mother Nature is not going to keep forgiving us. She is lean and angry.” “Time for us to take care of our mother as we are grown-ups now,” she said.
Gandhi, the chairperson of the international jury selecting the winners for the Energy Globe Award, said there were 732 entries from 95 countries, that is half of the world. “The next year’s challenge is to get the other half involved.”
The Energy Globe Award is one of the world’s most recognised environmental awards. The Awards are presented to projects from around the world in the categories Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Youth. The aim of the event is to relay to a large audience the best solutions for today’s energy and climate challenges. The other winners of the award wee:

Category Water: Jerry M. Brownstein for developing a very effective waste water treatment, using a special water filter, made of recycled plastics for gaining drinking water from waste water.

Category Air: Reindert Augustijn for inventing small Biogas plants helping to reduce annual CO2 emissions up to 54000 tonnes and role models for another 150,000 plants.

Category Youth: University of Art/Linz for inventing a new solar passive house in South Africa, which is able to provide an indoor temperature level of 20 degrees independently from outdoor temperature using a natural air condition system.
The National Award went to the host country Belgium for sensitively changing a historical old private house into an energy-saving building.
Austrian engineer and environmentalist Wolfgang Neumann, founder of ENERGY GLOBE, said: “The awarded projects are excellent role models to the whole world! If we don’t blame others and start taking action, all goals to protect the environment are within reach!” (INEPNEXT)

Source: http://www.neurope.eu