Check on energy intensity planned

Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar today pledged to formulate a national response plan for reducing the unsustainably high energy intensity levels in India.

Aiyar, who was addressing the two-day International Energy Service Company (Esco) Conference jointly organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and the Petroleum Conservation Research Association (Pcra), said achieving energy-efficiency through Public Private Panchayat Partnership (PPPP) to reach out to all the villages and household manufacturing units in the country was the need of the hour.

"We need to harness the power of 1 million women representatives of panchayats to make energy conservation a mass movement in the country, for which the Institution of Engineers would provide basic petty engineering skills to the end users," he said.

Aiyar also said energy-efficient technologies needed to be brought to farmers and micro-units in the country and that "there is no better institution to deliver such technology than the panchayats".

Earlier S C Tripathi, petroleum secretary, underlined the need to establish comprehensive base line data on specific energy consumption.

In each sector, benchmarking the best and updating the benchmark to the world's best for improving efficiency in the use of energy.

"The role of ESCOs is critical as inability to prioritise funds to obtain finance for energy efficiency projects is a strong deterrent to resist investment in energy efficiency projects," he said.

"With the enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol and carbon trading new opportunities would arise for the ESCO industry and the new emerging carbon markets will create new project financing opportunities and further diffusion of monitoring and verification techniques," he added.