<div>Meeting the energy needs of our fast growing population and industrialisation processes has always been a pain point for any Government in India. One of the growing concerns which the country is grappling today is energy crisis. Electricity has become an essential tool for the sustenance of any economy or country. With the per capita consumption in the subcontinent touching approximately thousand kilowatts and ever increasing; the country has to focus on alleviating the growing concern of energy crisis. Besides, the question of providing this necessity at reasonable prices seems to be unanswered. </div><div> </div><div>Today, close to 400 million Indians are completely cut off from grid power, primarily due to inaccessible geography. While renewable energy seems to be a solution, higher investment costs come across to be a huge challenge. In such testing scenarios, innovation can be the polestar addressing the energy crunch of the nation.<br> </div><div>Inspired by this thinking, researchers at IBM undertook the initiative to ease the power shortage confronted by developing nations. They chose to take responsibility to differentiate themselves from the existing technologies by focusing on another environmental concern- e-waste. </div><div> </div><div>As suggested by a study in 2013, the operations of a big multinational IT company in India alone results in more than 10 tons of discarded e-waste. Scientists at India Research Lab, IBM took upon the challenge of turning e-waste into the nation’s advantage. Research scientists at IBM found that discarded laptop batteries still have enough power to keep an LED light on for more than 4 hours a day in a year, when fully charged. From this unconventional solution - UrJar, an IBM India project aims to benefit populations in developing nations where accessibility to reliable power is still a far sighted dream. </div><div> </div><div>Adoption of this technology commercially at a large scale can further incentivise the process of organised collection of e-waste. At present, it is estimated that 95 per cent of e-waste collection and recycling in the country is managed by the informal sector involving a network of local garbage dealers, posing safety concerns over disposal of hazardous wastes. Moreover, this solution eliminates the use of kerosene for lighting purposes resulting in reduction of greenhouse emissions by 2.7 kilograms per lamp </div><div> </div><div>IBM deployed this innovative solution: UrJar in five street-side shops in Bangalore (which were inaccessible to grid electricity) to understand it’s usability in a real world scenario. The results were gratifying as the users could easily meet their lighting requirements and were pleased by the long duration of backup power provided by the device. We would like to present this solution being a classic case of converting a biggest national challenge to address another; alleviation of energy poverty through reusing e-waste. Two birds with one stone. </div><div> </div><div> To conclude, IBM considers UrJar as a vision for not just dissemination but sustenance within the community to compliment the economic enticements with the technological characteristics. It has the potential to channel e-waste towards the alleviation of energy poverty, thus simultaneously providing a sustainable solution for both problems.</div><div> </div><div><em>The author, Vikas Chandan, is Research Scientist & Mohit Jain, Research Engineer, IBM Research Labs, India</em></div><div> </div>
