To revolutionize the transport of goods and reduce the overall logistic costs, the Automotive Industry Standards Committee has amended its AIS-113 Standard to include the safety requirements of Road-Trains and has hosted the draft on Ministry of Road Transport & Highway’s website. The standards have been prepared after examining European benchmarks, keeping in mind Indian operating conditions. These standards shall pave the way for a breakthrough intervention for fast and efficient movement of goods along the long-distance freight corridors.

Meity had released the draft data centre policy which proposed to designate data centres as infrastructure and to group centres under the essential services category among other measures. The government is formulating a scheme to incentivise investments to set-up hyperscale data centres in India and boost the capacity of the existing data centre ecosystem, besides working on new segments like drones and robotics to develop their manufacturing ecosystem in India. “The current scale of hyperscale data centres in India compared in terms of power consumed is 200 MegaWatts and our effort will be to come out with a policy and scheme that aims for a tenfold growth in this, in a very short time,” Secretary - MEITY, said in a virtual session.

Indian telecom standards body TSDSI has submitted a vision for 6G to UN body ITU Radiocommunication sector that finalises global standard for wireless communications. Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) in its submission said it should be a technology that aids the development of a ubiquitous intelligent mobile connected society, bridge the digital divide with affordability, support technologies for personalisation and localisation of services as well as focus on data protection management. In a document 'TSDSI submits 6G Vision to ITU-R', the body said that TSDSI is contributing towards the above IMT 2030 work. TSDSI said that as part of its 6G journey, it will 'steer research in India to serve the above goals' and 'continue engagement with global standard bodies for harmonisation of efforts'.

Semiconductor major NXP India is partnering with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and Fabless Chip Design Incubator (FabCI), IIT Hyderabad for its maiden ‘Semiconductor Startup Incubation and Acceleration Programme’. It aims to support India's vision of making the country a self-reliant nation as it will create a ready platform to support startups who wish to design semiconductor chips in India. Industry estimates suggest the Indian semiconductor market stands at around $300 million. If semiconductor fabs are added to this, the value could go up to $4-5 billion.

Ministry of Power has decided to set up a National Mission on use of Biomass in coal based thermal power plants. This would further support the energy transition in the country and our targets to move towards cleaner energy sources.  The proposed National Mission on biomass will also contribute in the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).

With an aim to provide single-window access to energy data for the country, government think tank Niti Aayog on Monday launched India Energy Dashboards (IED) Version 2.0, according to an official statement.  While launching the IED, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said that it is an endeavour to establish a central energy database of the country. "With the rise of renewables and many other new energy technologies, the interplays between energy supply and demand sectors are now becoming increasingly critical," he said adding that the scenario building exercise is the key as India needs to seize today's opportunities to build a sustainable tomorrow.

 Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE), organization that works on creating awareness about energy efficiency as a resource, has released the Green Vehicle Rating (GVR), country’s only vehicle rating system based on environmental performance. An information tool, GVR aims to reshape consumer knowledge on vehicles and help buyers calculate its impact on a community's health and environment. With the launch of the industry first tool, AEEE has set out to move the ever growing 2 and 3 wheeler rider base towards greener options in the country. GVR also intends to help buyers identify high performing vehicles, make informed decisions with a web-based rating system for vehicles followed by working towards increasing the demand for greener variants.

The Government of India and European Investment Bank (EIB) signed the finance contract for second tranche of Euro 150 million for Pune Metro Rail project through a virtual signing ceremony. EIB had approved the total loan of Euro 600 million to fund the Pune Metro Rail project. The Finance Contract for first tranche of Euro 200 million was signed between GoI and EIB on 22.7.2019. The project aims to provide efficient, safe, economic and pollution-free Mass Rapid Transit System in densely populated area in the city of Pune served with heterogeneous traffic options.