With a population of 1.3 billion, growing at 1.2 per cent per year, India is a heavy hitter in the world of global emissions. But while the country is the globe’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter after the United States and China, it also has big ambitions in terms of energy efficiency.
The energy sector accounts for some 71 per cent of India’s emissions, a fact the government is committed to changing through an aggressive roll out of energy efficiency programmes, including a plan to be the world’s first country to use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, for all its lighting needs.
“It will be message that India acts rather than making big promises," according to Power Minister Piyush Goyal.
“Global partnerships such as these will accelerate our efforts in mitigating climate change and provide hope for a better future for the coming generations.”
UN Environment and partners are backing India’s green ambitions through Creating and Sustaining Markets for Energy Efficiency, a Global Environment Facility-supported project to boost the uptake of efficient lighting and other technologies.
The project is supporting Indian public-private venture Energy Efficiency Services Ltd to expand the market for LED street lighting and domestic lighting, while providing the expertise necessary for the venture to test new technologies such as super-efficient ceiling fans, tri-generation technologies and smart grid-applications.
By expanding the venture's initiatives on LED lighting - which provide energy savings of 50 per cent to 70 per cent compared to other technologies - the project is expected to save over 7.5 million tonnes in carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions by 2022.
Meanwhile, through the rollout of tri-generation, which combines simultaneous heating, cooling and electricity generation, and smart-grid technology, which enables advanced load forecasting, load control, outage management and theft detection, the partnership is boosting energy efficiency while proving the value of greener technologies in the commercial market.
“All these are new technologies and business models, yet untested in India,” Energy Efficiency Services Ltd Director Saurabh Kumar says, “the GEF grants will be used to open up these markets.”
“Global partnerships such as these will accelerate our efforts in mitigating climate change and provide hope for a better future for the coming generations.”
