Future of Energy Data in India
Download full PDF of paper for free (version: 21 July 2016): India's Energy Data: The Urgent Need to Move from Patchwork Systems to a National Energy Information Agency
Availability of good data is crucial for robust policy analysis, including policy design and evaluation and for enhancing transparency in energy sector governance. This is especially true in a country like India that needs to rapidly expand its energy infrastructure, improve the availability, affordability, and reliability of energy supply to its masses, and has a leapfrogging opportunity in doing so. To realize this potential and opportunity, however, will require leveraging appropriate policy tools complemented with careful planning, implementation, evaluation, and course-correction as learning accrues over time. As India embarks on its critically vital mission to expand and modernize its energy infrastructure and supply, it needs to leverage energy data as a national asset.
We propose that India should create a national Energy Information Agency – an Indian EIA or “indEIA.” India urgently needs a dedicated, central agency to collect, collate, disseminate, and facilitate the analysis of all essential energy-related data. There are a number of government support programs, for everything from renewable energy to electricity access, in the billions of dollars. Their efficacy is rarely understood, in part because of data limitations. An entity like indEIA will be critical in helping India leverage the creative powers of the national and international research community to provide reliable, cost-effective, and clean energy to its citizens. In addition, granular data can enable the industry as well as policymakers to move towards more customized, dynamic, and nimble solutions, instead of relying on averaged, aggregated, and non-granular time-series or spatial data. Thus our proposal envisions indEIA as the primary vehicle for curating and maintaining India’s energy data, a vital national (and global) asset.
Download full PDF of paper for free (version: 21 July 2016): India's Energy Data: The Urgent Need to Move from Patchwork Systems to a National Energy Information Agency
Authors:
Varun Rai*, Rahul Tongia#, Gireesh Shrimali^, Nikit Abhyankar@
* Assistant Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs and Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
# Fellow, Brookings India
^ Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University and Director, Climate Policy Initiative, India
@ Senior Scientific Engineering Associate, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA