PM-KUSUM
Context:
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has extended the deadline to install 30,000 MW solar power capacity in rural India to March 2026 under PM-KUSUM (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha Evam Uttham Mahabhiyan).
Relevance:
GS-III: Industry and Infrastructure (Energy related Infrastructure, Renewable energy sources, Government Policies and Interventions)
Dimensions of the Article:
- About Pradhan Mantri – Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM)
- Benefits of PM-KUSUM
- Challenges in implementation of PM-KUSUM
About Pradhan Mantri – Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM)
- The PM-KUSUM scheme was launched by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to support installation of off-grid solar pumps in rural areas and reduce dependence on grid, in grid-connected areas.
- The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) had in February 2019 approved the launch of the scheme with the objective of providing financial and water security.
- The government’s Budget for 2020-21 expanded the scope for the scheme with 20 lakh farmers to be provided assistance to install standalone solar pumps; another 15 lakh farmers to be given help to solarise their grid-connected pump sets.
- This will enable farmers to set up solar power generation capacity on their barren lands and to sell it to the grid.
- PM-KUSUM consists of three components and aims to add a solar capacity of 30.8 GW by 2022:
- Component-A: 10,000 MW of decentralised ground-mounted grid-connected renewable power plants.
- Component-B: Installation of two million standalone solar-powered agriculture pumps.
- Component-C: Solarisation of 1.5 million grid-connected solar-powered agriculture pumps.
Benefits of PM-KUSUM
- PM-KUSUM, supports the financial health of electricity distribution companies (Discoms) by reducing the burden of subsidy to the agriculture sector and helps them meet the RPO (Renewable Purchase Obligation) targets.
- PM-KUSUM promotes decentralised solar power production, and reduces transmission losses and a potential way to reduce their subsidy outlay towards irrigation.
- If farmers are able to sell surplus powers, they will be incentivised to save power and, in turn, it will mean the reasonable and efficient use of groundwater, and it will also increase their income.
Challenges in implementation of PM-KUSUM
- Due to the strict DCR (Domestic Content Requirements), the suppliers of solar equipment have to raise the domestic cell sourcing. However, there isn’t enough domestic cell manufacturing capacity.
- There has been the relative omission of small and marginal farmers, as the scheme focuses on pumps of 3 HP and higher capacities. It is due to this, solar pumps are not reaching the majority of farmers, as nearly 85% of them are small & marginal.
- Due to power subsidies, the recurring cost of electricity is so low that farmers keep on pumping water and the water table is going down.
- In a solar installation, it becomes a more difficult job to upgrade to higher capacity pumps in case the water table falls because one will have to add new solar panels which are expensive.
-Source: The Hindu
North Star
Context:
Vice President said Parliament is the “North Star” of democracy, “a place of discussion and deliberation to realise the aspirations and dreams of the people”.
Relevance:
GS I: Geography
Dimensions of the Article:
- About North Star
- When was the North Star first used to navigate?
- Literary metaphor
About North Star
- Polaris, also known as the North Star or the Pole Star, is a very bright star (around 2500 times more luminous than our sun) placed less than 1° away from the north celestial pole.
- Its position and brightness have made humans use it for navigation since late antiquity.
- It is a part of the constellation Ursa Minor and is around 323 light-years away from Earth.
- Since Polaris lies nearly in a direct line with the Earth’s rotational axis “above” the North Pole, it stands almost motionless in the night sky, with all the stars of the northern sky appearing to rotate around it.
- This makes it an excellent fixed point from which to draw measurements for celestial navigation.
- Simply the elevation of the star above the horizon gives the approximate latitude of the observer and in the northern hemisphere, if you can see Polaris you can always tell which way is north (and, by extension, which ways are south, east and west).
- Upon crossing the equator to the South, the North Star is lost over the horizon and hence stops being a useful navigational aid.
When was the North Star first used to navigate?
- Polaris seems to have been first charted by the Roman mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy, who lived from about 85 to 165 B.C.
- While there does exist some evidence pointing at how the star was used for navigation in late antiquity, it is during the ‘Age of Exploration’ that it becomes such a central part of human history.
- Christopher Columbus, on his first trans-Atlantic voyage of 1492, “had to correct (his ship’s bearings) for the circle described by the pole star about the pole”, wrote his son in his biography.
- As European colonisers set sail for exotic locations across the world, the North Star became an ever so important feature of the night sky that allowed for remarkably accurate navigation using instruments which were still rudimentary by modern standards.
Literary metaphor
- The first well known instance of the North Star appearing in literature outside of a technical treatise on astronomy or a biography of an explorer is in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where the eponymous emperor describes himself as being “as constant as the Northern Star”.
- However, the “constant” North Star was probably not known to the real Caesar (reign 49-44 BC).
- Also, as the NASA page on Polaris points out, “North Star” is “a title that passes to different stars over time”. As the Earth’s axis of rotation wobbles in the same way as a spinning top, the celestial pole “wanders in a slow circle over the eons, sweeping past different stars”.
- About 14,000 years ago, the celestial pole pointed towards the bright star Vega, and “it will again point to Vega in about 12,000 years”.
-Source: Indian Express
Green Deal Industrial Plan
Context:
In a bid to support and expand its green industry, the European Union revealed the “Green Deal Industrial Plan” that aims to cut red tape and provide massive subsidies.
- The move has come just a few months after the United States announced its Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which contains billions of dollars of tax cuts for clean energy and climate change programs with incentives for US-based manufacturing.
Relevance:
GS II: International Relations
Dimensions of the Article:
- What is the ‘Green Deal Industrial Plan’?
- Counter to the USA’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)
What is the ‘Green Deal Industrial Plan’?
- According to the website of the European Commission, which oversees trade policy of the EU, the proposal involves building a simpler regulatory framework, providing faster access to funds, enhancing skills and improving the EU’s trade network.
Simpler regulatory framework:
- The plan seeks to formulate a “Net-Zero Industry Act”, which will not only simplify rules but also speed up the issuance of permits for green projects, such as renewable energy generation arrays, carbon capture and renewable hydrogen production facilities.
- It also includes a “Critical Raw Materials Act”, which will provide access to materials like rare earths that are crucial for developing net-zero technology.
Providing faster access to funds:
- According to the proposal, state aid rules will be loosened in order to help EU’s 27 governments with investing in the clean energy projects.
- Keeping in mind that every country doesn’t have deep pockets like France and Germany to provide subsidies to companies, the plan allows countries to take money from existing EU funds.
- Notably, the proposal doesn’t involve any fresh crash and seeks to direct €250 billion to serve the green industry from the existing EU money, which is around €800 billion.
- There is also a provision for setting up a “European Sovereignty Fund” in the future to “give a structural answer to the investment needs”.
Enhancing skills:
- The plan aims to establish “Net-Zero Industry Academies” that will provide up-skilling and re-skilling programmes in strategic industries.
- According to the European Commission’s website, 30 to 40 per cent of the existing jobs might get affected due to green transition.
- Therefore, the “Green Deal Industrial Plan” focuses on developing the skills needed for well-paid quality jobs.
Improving the trade network:
- The plan underlines the importance of open trade and seeks to further “develop the EU’s network of Free Trade Agreements and other forms of cooperation with partners to support the green transition.”
Counter to the USA’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)
- The USA’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was announced in August 2022.
- The legislation directs $390 billion towards clean energy projects with tax breaks and incentives for customers and manufacturers.
- The European Union expressed concerns about its discriminatory provisions and the potential for putting European companies at a disadvantage.
- The EU announced their own plan for providing subsidies to sustainable companies.
- Some analysts fear that this may trigger a global subsidy war and question the effectiveness of wide-ranging government support in creating strong industries.
- Critics argue that projects might not be built and companies may fail, wasting money.
-Source: Indian Express
Muons
Context:
According to a recent study, scientists are investigating the fortress wall of the ancient city Xi’an in China using muons, tiny particles from outer space, which can pass through hundreds of meters of stone.
- To analyse 14 kilometres long rampart, researchers deployed a technique called muon tomography or muography, which uses muons to generate three-dimensional images of such large structures.
Relevance:
GS III: Science and Technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- What are muons?
- What is muon tomography or muography?
- Muons in Archaeology and Beyond
What are muons?
- Muons are subatomic particles raining from space.
- They are created when the particles in Earth’s atmosphere collide with cosmic rays — clusters of high-energy particles that move through space at just below the speed of light.
- According to Scientific American magazine, “about 10,000 muons reach every square metre of the Earth’s surface a minute”.
- These particles resemble electrons but are 207 times as massive.
- Therefore, they are sometimes called “fat electrons”.
- Because muons are so heavy, they can travel through hundreds of metres of rock or other matter before getting absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos, said the journal Science.
- In comparison, electrons can penetrate through only a few centimetres.
- Muons are highly unstable and exist for just 2.2 microseconds.
What is muon tomography or muography?
- Muography is conceptually similar to X-ray but capable of scanning much larger and wider structures, owing to the penetration power of muons.
- As these high-energy particles are naturally produced and ubiquitous, all one needs to do is place a muon detector underneath, within or near the object of interest.
- The detector then tracks the number of muons going through the object from different directions, to form a three-dimensional image.
- According to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), the image is then “then compared with a muon image of the “free sky.”
- This indicates how many muons have been blocked.
- The final picture is essentially a shadow of the object, in the light of cosmic muons.
Muons in Archaeology and Beyond
Introduction to Muons and Archaeology
- Muons are tiny outer space particles that can penetrate hundreds of meters of stone surfaces
- First use of muons in archaeology was in the late 1960s when Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez and Egyptologists searched for hidden chambers in the Pyramid of Khafre, Giza
- A repeat of the experiment in 2017 with more advanced muon detectors resulted in the discovery of a previously unknown chamber
Latest Study using Muons in Xi’an
- Used the Cosmic Ray Muon Imaging System (CORMIS)
- Deployed six detectors for a week to collect enough data for scanning the whole structure
- Results indicated density anomalies inside the rampart with unprecedented levels of precision
Applications of Muography Beyond Archaeology
- Muography has been used in customs security and internal imaging of volcanoes
- Used to examine the Fukushima nuclear reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan
- Detectors were placed in 10 cm thick boxes for protection from high levels of radiation.
-Source: Indian Express
Gravitational lensing
Context:
The Hubble Space Telescope measured the mass of a white dwarf designated LAWD 37, which burned out over 1 billion years ago. In the work, scientists used a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
Relevance:
GS III: Science and Technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- What is Gravitational lensing?
- About the Hubble telescope
What is Gravitational lensing?
- Gravitational lensing is the bending of light by objects of great mass, first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915.
- It occurs when a massive object, like a cluster of galaxies, creates a gravitational field that distorts and magnifies the light from distant galaxies.
- This allows researchers to study details of early galaxies too far away to be seen with the most powerful telescopes.
About the Hubble telescope
- The Hubble Space Telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990.
- It is a large, space-based observatory that has revolutionized astronomy with its coverage from ultraviolet to near infrared.
- Hubble is part of NASA’s Great Observatories Program, which also includes the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO), and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO).
-Source: Indian Express
