The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), under the aegis of the ministry of power, has started the implementation of its Energy Efficiency Programme for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Gujarat and it has identified six SME clusters in the state, which include Surat (textiles), Jamnagar (brass), Morbi (ceramics), Ahmedabad (chemicals), Vapi (dyes and chemicals) and Gujarat dairy clusters.
As part of the intiative, union minister of state for power, Bharatsinh Solanki, inaugurated the Information Dissemination Workshop in the Surat textile cluster on Saturday. The objective of the programme is to accelerate the adoption of energy efficient technologies and practices in the chosen SME clusters through knowledge sharing, capacity building and development of innovative financing mechanisms.
"The BEE has taken the task to improve the energy performance in selected 35 SME clusters across the country. Energy is the prime mover of the economy of any nation and the entire fabric of developmental goals is created around a successful energy strategy, especially for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) that form the backbone of the Indian economy," Bharatsinh Solanki said while inaugurated the Information Dissemination Workshop in the Surat textile cluster.
The textile cluster in Surat -one of the prime clusters in Gujarat famous for synthetic sarees and dress materials - has about 400 industries for dyeing of synthetic and cotton cloth. The annual electricity consumption of this cluster is about 726 GWh. The annual gas consumption is 315 million SCM and 2.3 million tons of coal is used, which accounts for nearly 1.2 million tons of oil equivalent of energy use. The overall energy saving potential in the cluster is about 1.5 lakh tons of oil equivalent, which is 13 per cent of its total power consumption.
Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General of BEE, informed that in "In Surat textile cluster, BEE has identified several energy efficiency proposals for reduction of energy consumption in the cluster. The major areas identified are natural gas based cogeneration power generation to fulfill the low cost power requirement and to process the hot water through waste heat recovery, micro-turbine, waste heat recovery from different processes to reduce the input energy, cost of production, adoption of new and efficient technologies like boilers, variable frequency drives, etc.," said Ajay Mathur, director general, BEE.
He also said that such workshop in the clusters would help dissemination of information on the new and sustainable energy efficiency technology opportunities in textile cluster and would lead to saving of cost of production.