BWI: India must Manage Energy Demand ‘Efficiently’: Shri Sushil Kumar Shinde, Union Minister of Power

Press release from Business Wire India
Source: The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE)
Wednesday, May 05, 2010 12:50 PM IST (07:20 AM GMT)
Editors: General: Consumer interest, Economy, Environment, Politics, Social issues; Business: Business services, Energy companies
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India must Manage Energy Demand 'Efficiently': Shri Sushil Kumar Shinde, Union Minister of Power


New Delhi, Delhi, India, Wednesday, May 05, 2010 -- (Business Wire India) -- . National Seminar on Energy Efficiency looks at concrete steps
. Minister underscores need for greater national awareness about energy efficiency
. Seminar facilitates consultation between different stakeholder groups

Demand for energy in India will keep increasing because of accelerated industrialization, urbanization and an emerging economy. Consequently, energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy is essential for decoupling growth in energy demand from economic growth while ensuring that India's energy demands are managed efficiently, said Hon'ble Shri Sushil Kumar Shinde, Union Minister of Power, at a national seminar organised by FICCI, under the aegis of Ministry of Power, Govt. of India, to engage all stakeholders to seek inputs on ways and means for promoting energy conservation and efficiency. Christened as the National Campaign for Energy Efficiency, this interactive seminar was a collective brainstorming session to translate the legislative intents into concrete action plans, keeping in view the ground level realities.

Delivering the inaugural address, Shri Shinde said, "The need of the hour is to have a more vigorous and focused national awareness campaign to meet the desired objective of reducing the energy intensity of the country. The Government of India has put in place an overarching legal, regulatory and policy framework to promote market based energy efficiency in the Indian economy."

"Bachat Lamp Yojana is the world's largest Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project to get approved by the CDM Executive Board of UNFCCC at Bonn, Germany. According to the scheme, BEE plans to replace 400 million power-consuming incandescent lamps with energy saving CFL bulbs across the country, that will cost the consumers Rs 15 a piece. The replacement of the ICLs by CFLs would lead to a potential reduction of over 6,000 MW in electricity demand", he added.

In his keynote address, Hon'ble Shri Bharatsinh Solanki, Minister of State for Power, said, "Energy efficiency has been brought to the centre-stage of the power sector during the last four years. The tremendous potential that energy efficiency has for saving power can bridge the gap between demand and supply. This potential needs to be harnessed and the Ministry of Power is pursuing this goal with all earnestness. All of us have a responsibility to contribute to energy efficiency efforts. Energy efficiency is the focal point of our efforts to enhance energy security and the need of the hour is to have a more vigorous and focused national awareness campaign to meet the desired objective of reducing the energy intensity of the country."

Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), said, "There is a need to generate a mass movement in favour of energy conservation to ensure that the need for energy conservation is firmly embedded in our daily lives. It has become a national cause, one that warrants all stakeholders to join hands and contribute towards an energy efficient economy. BEE invites all stakeholders to come together and contribute towards creating an energy-efficient India by promoting and endorsing BEE's programs and initiatives."

Commenting on the need for such a seminar, Dr Amit Mitra, lauding the initiative of Ministry of Power and BEE said, "The seminar is timely and welcome- it will significantly enhance the outreach for energy efficiency and conservation, which is the need of the hour. FICCI will wholeheartedly support this endeavour."

Among several programmes underway, the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC,) was launched by the Govt. of India on 2007. This code is intended for new commercial buildings and has initially been launched on voluntary basis. In order to further accelerate the energy efficiency activities in the existing commercial building sector, BEE developed a Star rating programme for office buildings which is based on the actual performance of a building in terms of its specific energy usage in kilo/sqm/year.

BEE's "Standards and Labelling programme" provides consumers an informed choice about the energy saving, thereby the cost saving potential of the marketed household and other equipment. This is expected to impact the energy savings in the medium and long run while at the same time it will position domestic industry to compete in such markets where norms for energy efficiency are mandatory. It includes appliances such as frost free refrigerators, air conditioners, tubular fluorescent lamps among others.

In order to accelerate demand side management (DSM) measures in the agriculture sector, Ministry of Power has initiated the Agriculture DSM programme in which pump set efficiency upgradation would be carried out through Public- private partnership mode. The objective of the programme is to create appropriate framework for market based interventions in the agricultural pumping sector by facilitating a conducive policy environment to promote Public Private Partnership (PPP) to implement the projects. First such project is under implementation in Solapur District in Maharashtra.

The inaugural session of the seminar was moderated by Dr Amit Mitra, Secretary General, FICCI and the welcome address was made by Mr Rajan Bharti Mittal, President of FICCI. The three sessions of the seminar focused on appliances, education and buildings, which were chaired by Mr Devender Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Power; Ms Rita Acharya, Director, Energy Conservation, Ministry of Power; and Mr Saurabh Kumar, Secretary, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, respectively. Other speakers and presenters included Mr Ajay Sharma from LG Electronics India, Ms Daksha Vaja from Gujarat Energy Development Agency and Dr Satish Kumar from USAID Eco-III project.

It is now expected that broad categorization of stakeholders covering consumer groups including agriculture, industry, commercial entities, domestic etc will ensue leading to constitution of various expert Sub-Groups advising on the future movement of the campaign.


CONTACT DETAILS
Mr. Saurabh Bhatnagar, Media Manager, The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), +91 (11) 26179699, saurabh.bee@gmail.com

KEYWORDS
CONSUMER, ECONOMY, ENVIRONMENT, POLITICS, SOCIAL, BUSINESS SERVICES, ENERGY

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