'India on way to becoming world's energy efficiency hub'

India is on its way to becoming the energy efficiency hub of the world and it constitutes a critical part of the country's goal of delivering "just" climate action, the key Indian negotiator said at the UN climate conference. "India is on its way to becoming the energy efficiency hub of the world. The programmes launched by the government are world-beating. People are now looking at India for best practices in energy efficiency and demand side management," said coal," said India's key negotiator Ajay Mathur at COP21. "It constitutes a critical part of our goal of delivering 'just climate action'. It is our mission to ensure access to energy efficient products for those who previously found them out of their reach," he said.

Around 400-500 people visited India's Pavilion on the second day as it saw two rounds of deliberations focusing on scaling up energy efficiency implementation in India and Industrial Energy Efficiency and Reporting. An official statement said that India has proved to be a model state in terms of introducing sustained efforts to reduce energy intensity through policy intervention. Under the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency, India has undertaken the world's largest LED-based lighting programme, which aims to replace 770 million incandescent bulbs and 35 million streetlights over a three-year period.

"These schemes have been largely successful, recording energy savings of 109,000 GWh while reducing 85 million tonnes of CO2," the statement said. Noting that India has evolved a successful business model for energy efficiency products and services that can be replicated globally, the statement said that the three crore LED bulbs distributed by EESL will result in an annual energy savings of 4 billion Kwh, capacity addition avoidance of over 900 MW and cost savings of Rs 3.04 billion and has impacted over 10 million consumers. This has also led to a reduction in CO2 emissions of over 3.2 million tonnes per annum, it said.

Addressing the second session, Mathur said that the main goal of the Perform, Achieve and Trade initiative of India's Energy Efficiency Certificates Trading Scheme, is to make plants efficient. "Because of the demand growth that is happening in India, new plants are coming up. Any plant that comes up, has to be more efficient than the rest. We need the industry in India and the world to collectively come work together so that we can enhance efficiency," he said.