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Asia's first 'Green Park' to come up in Andhra

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad

Asia's first 'Green Park' -- a live demonstration facility for the entire gamut of green energy technologies, products and services -- will be set up near Jadcherla town in Andhra Pradesh soon.

The Green Park project is to be a joint venture between the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Andhra Pradesh government.

The multi-billion-rupee project will be located on a 1,000-acre site close to Jadcherla town in Mahbubnagar district. The district officials have been asked by the government to identify a suitable site for the project within three months.

"The proposed Green Park should be a role model for other industrial estates in the state and country," Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said at the monthly meeting of State Investment Promotion Board on Wednesday.

"In view of the international airport coming up near Shamshabad (on the outskirts of Hyderabad), the Green Park should be developed a little farther away with international benchmarks," he added.

The proposal for setting up a Green Park was mooted by the CII during the Partnership Summit held in Hyderabad in January this year.

The concept was presented to the chief minister and he assured support for the project and said that Andhra Pradesh would be a partner in this exciting venture.

The Green Park at Jadcherla will be on the lines of the one existing in California.

It will provide infrastructure for locating companies dealing with environment-friendly and energy efficient technologies. The Green Park will be a unique facility in entire Asia. It will be based on the model of a similar facility in California.

Companies will be provided facilities necessary to locate their activities in environment and clean energy areas.

As a precursor to the Green Park, the CII has already taken up the work on a Green Business Centre to offer 'green services'.

The GBC, which is coming up on a five-acre site at Madhapur near the Hitec City, will be a unique centre in this part of the world. Only two such centres are located in the United States at present. One of them is Green Institute in Minnesota.

The GBC will be a research centre for environment-friendly and energy efficient technologies. It will be a training centre for personnel in these areas as well as a catalyst for promoting environment-friendly policies and practices.

It will also offer services such as green technology audit, green building certification, green process certification, and social audits for companies.

A joint initiative of the CII and the Andhra Pradesh government, the GBC has technical support of USAID. The Rs 170-million project is funded by the CII and its members.

The construction works, entailing an outlay of Rs 50 million, are slated to be completed by the end of this calendar year.

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