Energy Efficiency in India An Overview and Course to Follow

An Overview and Course to Follow

- Kriti Sharma

Kriti Sharma expresses her thoughts on how India needs to remove barriers to scale-up new and additional cleaner sources of energy along with energy-efficiency measures. While lower tariffs have favoured the scaling up of large grid-scale projects, renewables do have hidden costs and other technical issues such as storage, efficiency of infrastructure, amongst others. There is a need for reforms to power market design to better integrate renewables alongside conventional sources of energy used by the country.

Optimizing energy intensity through energy efficiency is an effective way of achieving low-carbon, inclusive and sustainable growth objectives, without impacting the sustained growth trajectory of a resource-constrained country. The decoupling of economic growth from enhanced energy demand is yet to be achieved. It is often attributed to the underlying challenges of energy overuse on the economy and natural environment, on one hand, and the establishment of a regulatory framework for institutionalizing energy efficiency on the other.

India has gained significant ground as far as improving the effectiveness of energy use is concerned and this is clear from the observed decreases in energy intensity of GDP. As per World Energy and Climate Statistics, from 0.126 koe/$15p in 2010 to 0.109 koe/$15p in 2020 and currently standing at 0.105 koe/$15p (2023), India has significant energy efficiency achievements. In India, several energy efficiency policies and measures have been created in recent years including the Energy Conservation Act (2022). These measures incorporate schemes like Standards and Labelling by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE);