Energy, energy conservation & Government of India

[blog no. 2 in the series of blogs on Energy Management by S. P. Damle]

         British Raj in India—which established an impressive railway network & many other institutions—did very little for Energy sector. The first hydro-power plant in India was put up by Jamshedji Tata in Khopoli, Maharashtra. Oil sector was left to American private players, dominated by Burmah Shell.

Pt. Nehru’s emphasis on large dams and hydro-power projects is well-known. He also established number of PSUs for manufacturing equipment for hydro and thermal power plants. He gave Mr. Homi Bhabha free hand to establish TIFR & BARC. Except for nuclear power, power sector was mostly left to individual state governments. States themselves were being re-organized and therefore, long-term vision about power sector was absent.

However, it was Mrs. Indira Gandhi who had a vision for energetic India and took many significant steps in Energy sector. She nationalized the foreign oil companies to form HPCL, BPCL etc. Number of PSUs working on fabrication of power plants were merged to form giant Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. She also gave boost to nuclear power, both for peace and for weapons. It was her idea to put up a gas pipeline from Hazira in Gujrat to Amethi in UP, [which was commissioned in 1986-87 after her death].

She founded Commission for Alternate Sources of Energy (CASE) and Petroleum Conservation Research Association (PCRA) in late 70s. While CASE bloomed into a full-fledged Ministry for New & Renewable Energy & plays a significant role today, PCRA drifted, organizing poster competition for school children and suchlike activities. [Today the achievement page on PCRA’s website shows that PCRA has trained 300 truck drivers!]

Unfortunately, after the tragic demise of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the nation witnessed a series of vision-less, uncertain and therefore myopic governments. The Hazira-Jagdishpur pipeline was functional but there were no users at other end, because no one wanted to set up industry in Amethi. Power plants have long gestation periods whereas the union governments were facing “No-Confidence Motions” once in 2-3 years. No government had the patience or resources to invest in power plants. The Privatization-Liberalization-Globalization policies of Dr. Manmohan Singh helped the industry grow phenomenally. However, Narsimha Rao government provided neither the infrastructure for transportation/logistics nor electricity to match the appetite of entrepreneurs. Power cuts and traffic jams became characteristics of India. Half of Bharat (rural India) had not seen electricity and rest half learnt to live with the power cuts. Dr. Manmohan Singh coined the phrase “compulsions of alliance politics” in 2013 but these forces were at play since 1990. When farmers & entrepreneurs were struggling with these shortages and outages, when our per capita consumption was one tenth of Europe’s, government leaders went to international fora and committed to reduce our CO2 emissions! Dr. Manmohan Singh represented Assam in Parliament but ONGC officers in Assam worked under the fear of Bodo extremists & rickety helicopters. During the UPA I regime, an Indian (Dr. RK Pachauri) was heading the IPCC and the CDM projects of UNFCCC were going full steam, but the government remained onlooker. UPA I government staked its neck against stiff resistance from communists, to get the Indo-US nuclear bill passed. However, not many nuclear power plants came up in its wake. ONGC is termed as MahaRatna company (big jewel in Govt. treasury) but the overall oil extracted by ONGC is minor percentage of consumption(14 to 20%) and India depends heavily on import of oil (Net Import of crude oil for 2017-18 was 220MMT against consumption of 252 MMT of crude oil1). Moreover, it seems ONGC/IOL have reached their limits and their crude oil production is dropping down consistently over last 10 years. Only good thing about UPA I was the structural reforms to trifurcate the state utilities into generation, transmission and distribution. Each of the new entity is more efficient in its core activity than before.  

It is against this grim backdrop the Energy Conservation Act 2001 was passed. As a consequence, Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) was set up. The bright performance of BEE appears brighter, on the grim backdrop discussed above.

BEE worked on many fronts simultaneously. First, BEE launched a system for qualification of certified Energy Auditors and Energy Managers. Till date more than 18,000 personnel are qualified. This pool of expertise became an important resource for the next step i.e. Perform-Achieve-Trade (PAT) scheme. For the PAT scheme, BEE declared certain industrial units as “designated consumers” (1073 energy intensive industries / establishments from 13 critical sectors.) and made the PAT scheme mandatory for them. BEE has processed enormous data for each type of industry and came up with formulae for calculating their energy indicators and targets. Today we are in sixth cycle of PAT and the last year’s estimated energy saving from the PAT at the national level is 13.3 MTOE. (When compared to our appetite of 1000 Mtoe annually, this is not very high.) Besides, the network of CEAs & ESCOs also helps in promoting the concept of energy conservation at other users across the industry.

Parallelly BEE started the star labelling programme for appliances. The list of appliances covered under the scheme is increasing every year. BEE also launched a standard for commercial and residential buildings—Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC). BEE has also taken up advisory activities for the Agricultural Demand Side Management (AgDSM ) & Municipal Demand Side Management (MuDSM).

Since May 2014, after Mr. Narendra Modi became PM, Government of India has taken many bold steps. Nation made progress in leaps and bounds. Coalmines were choked with corruption. Those blockages were removed, TPS started working at 100% capacity and power cuts were reduced considerably. Eighteen thousand villages did not have electricity in 2014. Those villages were electrified in 36 months. International Energy Agency has lauded these efforts.  “The IEA highly commends the Government of India for this outstanding result and supports its efforts to shift the focus towards reaching isolated areas and ensuring round-the-clock reliability of electricity supply.” 2

At the same time, GoI also worked on reducing CO2 emissions. Internationally, Mr. Modi took initiative and with cooperation from the then President of France Mr. Francoise Hollande, launched” International Solar Alliance”. At National level, thrust was given on renewable or clean sources. Installed capacity of solar plants has grown from 2.6 GW to 36 GW over last 6 years. Renewables (including hydro) form 36.7% of overall installed capacity. 2.25 lakh solar pumps are installed.  23 Crore LED lamps were distributed free-of-cost. Crores of households were given LPG connection to reduce use of biomass in kitchen, thereby reducing CO2 emissions. {Source: Websites of MNRE & Power ministry.}.  Ministry for Petroleum & gas is investing in some large-scale projects to convert biomass & waste into fuel gas. Various ministries are also experimenting with ethanol.

These are the visible results. To make these things happen, GoI has set up some infrastructure in the background. The NITI Aayog has been active in this field. Many Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) companies such as EESL, its subsidiary CESL, CSC, etc. are established. This infrastructure ensures that funds and incentives are provided in synergic manner.  

BEE also serves as a nodal agency for International Multilateral and bilateral cooperation activities in the field of Energy Conservation. Such cooperative projects would serve as stabilizer in the otherwise fluctuating international relations. Thus, BEE is playing a vital role in this field.

Under the EC Act, 2001, all the states have also formed Designated Agencies (SDA) for the administration of Energy Conservation efforts, to promote EE schemes, to provide financial assistance & also to capture and provide data, etc. State Partnership for Energy Efficiency Demonstrations (SPEED) is initiated. Some state governments, like Karnataka have worked in tandem with BEE and NITI, while some state governments are yet to understand the importance of energy conservation. States are mapped based on their performance3 as shown on top

Government of India wanted to promote Electric Vehicles aggressively, but faced stiff resistance from the conventional IC engine manufacturers’ lobby-- SIAM. Technological forces will eventually push them out, maybe by 2040. However, India has lost the first- mover advantage. In the last century, we followed Europe for technological developments. Now next 2-3 decades, we shall be tagging China for EVs; thanks to SIAM.

As we go to the press, the country is facing the onslaught of the second wave of Covid-19. Hence the paragraph on concluding remarks and future projections is deleted from this blog! We pray for a better tomorrow!

References:-

1.    Energy Statistics 2019 Report by CSO

2.    India 2020, Energy Policy Review by International Energy Agency www.iea.org/t&c/

3.    State Energy Efficiency Index 2019—Report by BEE

About the Author—

Mr. S. P. Damle, graduated from IIT Bombay and has worked in electrical machine manufacturing for 17 years. For last 17 years, he has been working as Auditor & Trainer for Management Systems for Quality, Safety and Energy. He has trained himself in various aspects of Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility. He has audited large oil corporations and petrochemical units in Gulf for Energy Management Systems.

You can contact him on [email protected]