)
The research findings say that India has approximately 17.9 percent of untapped electricity efficiency potential and optimising industrial motor-driven systems could deliver overall savings up to 60 percent on industrial electricity consumption, thus providing a huge opportunity for cost-savings, according to a research report of Siemens Financial Services, a subsidiary of Siemens AG.
Independent research was conducted amongst the global top 20 industrial equipment manufacturers between late 2014 and early 2015. The research provided an estimate on the unused potential for energy efficiency (usage and cost-savings, expressed as a proportion of total electricity consumption) in the manufacturing sector, putting India in the second position following Russia and ahead of China in electricity efficiency potential.
In order to remain competitive in the future, the report suggests, the manufacturing sector should continuously innovate and reinvent itself. In particular, electricity consumption and prices have risen substantially over the last decade. Electricity usage in the manufacturing sector has undergone huge growth over the last 40 years, rising three times faster than overall energy use, and now represents over a quarter of industrial energy consumption.
Sunil Kapoor, chief executive officer, Siemens Financial Services Pvt Ltd, said, “Investing in electricity-efficiency technologies not only helps cut energy bills, manufacturing costs and carbon emissions, new equipment often brings productivity and capacity improvements as an added bonus, improving business performance and competitiveness. The global manufacturing sector is inevitably electrifying. Resulting in electricity becoming a pathway to a sustainable energy system and allowing greater levels of automation and digitalisation in the manufacturing process.”
Access to finance to fund investments in energy efficient equipment remains relatively restricted in many countries, especially in India where there are large base of smaller and medium-sized manufacturing operations. “Such tailored financing arrangements will prove fundamental to the Indian manufacturing sector in terms of energy-efficiency and thus, will boost the government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative placing India as a manufacturing hub,” added Kapoor.
The manufacturing sector globally is now estimated to account for 42 percent of total annual electricity consumption. The sector has, therefore, become keenly focused on installing more electricity efficient equipment to reduce the consumption and cost of electricity. As a result, an increasing range of electricity-efficient solutions are now available to manufacturers that help reduce electricity consumption, reduce transmission losses, improve business performance, reduce lifecycle costs and meet environmental regulations.
