Energy conservation in India: a profile

The decade and half since the oil crisis of 1973 has been a period that has witnessed a steady growth of the energy conservation ethos in India. Housekeeping and low risk conservation options have been largely preferred so far. The IMWG (Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Utilization and Conservation of Energy) study did not evaluate potential saving through the introduction of high risk and high pay-off technologies. The potential for energy conservation in India is substantial. However, some of the barriers to achieving the potential in the past have been energy prices which deviate from rational tariffs and prices, a lack of information on specific measures and of options for achieving energy conservation, paucity of capital for schemes requiring technology upgradation and efficiency improvements, and the inadequacy if institutional arrangement for promoting energy conservation in different sectors of the economy. Recent efforts pursued by several organizations however provide some basis for optimism. Given the growing capital intensity of the energy sector in India, more vigorous efforts are likely to be made in the future. In particular, success stories in some industrial units indicate that decentralized efforts by the units themselves can achieve a great deal in improving the efficiency of energy use, particularly in the Indian industry. Policies to promote such programmes would help accelerate energy conservation efforts in industrial units and in other sectors. It is therefore hoped that the intensity of energy use in several sectors of the indian economy will be reduced significantly in the coming years. (author). 3 refs., 3 tabs