IISc aims to cut carbon footprint

In a bid to reduce carbon emission in Bangalore, researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), will be collaborating with scientists from China in a workshop on April 13 and 14 at IISc.

The ‘Low Carbon Cities: 2012 Bangalore Workshop’ will focus on devising alternative methodologies in controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and urban planning. And interestingly the researchers will compare the Bangalore’s GHG emissions with that of Xian in China. “We chose Bangalore to do this study because it is one of the emerging cities in the country and we collaborated with researchers from China because Xian is similar to Bangalore in terms of size and growth. We will compare the carbon emissions of both cities and how to mitigate those numbers,” says Dr Ramachandra TV, Energy & Wetlands Research Group, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc.

The speakers from China attending the workshop are: Sun Sheng Han of Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Australia; Yuanqing Wang of Chang’an Unervisity in Xi’an, China and Bo Qin of Renmin university in China.

Ramachandra himself will be presenting a paper on the carbon footprint of Bangalore. “We will discuss various issues like how consumption of electricity has changed over the years in the city due to carbon emissions, and how the landscape of the city itself has changed,” he said. Everything from waste mis-management to transportation chaos will also be delved into, he elaborated.

These discussions will help the researchers in coming up with new improved models that will help reduce the carbon footprint of not only Bangalore, but other cities in the country as well, Ramachandra said.

“This research has been going on for one-and-a-half years. We will generate models for policy makers based on that. On the second day, we will be taking the Chinese researchers on a field trip to the area with the most amount of carbon emission in the city,” he said.