SAIC's Support of India's Power Sector Helps Win Environmental Awards
Winter 2003/2004
One of the advantages of working at SAIC is the opportunity to help customers solve complex problems of global significance. For one of the world's largest climate change programs, two SAIC scientists are helping India reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power generation plants while promoting climate-friendly technologies in other developing countries.
Dr. Radha Krishnan and Dr. Sai Gollakota provide expert advice to help India produce clean, efficient power from its indigenous coal and from sugar cane wastes. Dr. Krishnan has dedicated his career to helping India in this area, providing two decades of service first as a contractor employee supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and then as an SAIC employee.
Since joining SAIC in 1994, Dr. Krishnan has helped the National Thermal Power Corporation of India (NTPC) establish its Center for Power Efficiency and Environmental Protection (CENPEEP). The Center has gained international recognition for its work in improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, receiving major international awards from the Climate Technology Initiative in 2002 and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2003.
Along with personnel from other companies, Krishnan and Gollakota have been advising NTPC and CENPEEP under programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and coordinated with DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).
"The bottom line is that we cannot attack poverty, improve food security, and build economic opportunity in poor countries without more energy. You cannot have economic growth without energy," according to Andrew Natsios, administrator of USAID.
Together, the combined efforts of Krishnan and Gollakota on the USAID India project have paid off over the years. Among their accomplishments:
- Overseeing the conceptualization of the design and construction of the first commercial coal preparation plant in India, which was the first time that India had begun to embrace combusting cleaned coal for power generation, rather than run-of-mine coal, which is produced before any cleaning or preparation.
- Construction of the Fuels Evaluation Test Facility, the first of its kind in Asia, to enable India to evaluate coals for new power plant construction.
- Through the combination of various project activities, India has now avoided approximately 10 million tons of CO2 emissions since the program began.
- Enabling India's sugar cane industry to use its waste biomass (bagasse) for power generation, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions while meeting demand for low-cost electric power.
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