Conserving power, one bulb at a time

Bureau of Energy Efficiency will launch the Bachat Lamp Yojana scheme, aimed at providing CFLs in 20 crore households around India by 2012, once it gets approval from the United Nations. By distributing CFLs, up to 4,000 MW of power can be saved annually — enough to light up Delhi for a day, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 11, 2010, 01:40:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s first thrust with energy efficiency through Earth Hour in 2009, when Delhi saved 600 MW — 14 per cent of its daily electricity requirement — in an hour, is set to get bigger.

The country’s first two pilot projects on saving household energy — the biggest cause of climate change — by replacing incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) in Haryana’s Yamunanagar and Vishakapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in the last six months have been a success so far.

Records indicate monthly household energy bill in the two towns reduced by 10-15 per cent.

“The pilots have worked well,” said Ajay Mathur, Director-General of Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), a technocrat mandated with implementing government’s energy efficiency policies. “A template is now ready for replicating the scheme all over the country.”

Each CFL lamp can reduce up to 30-40 per cent in monthly electricity bill.

In Delhi, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit plans to shut off lights in government buildings and monuments such as Qutub Minar on March 27 for Earth Hour 2010, to be organised by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) with Hindustan Times in over 50 cities.

“We want to reduce per capita energy consumption to meet Delhi’s growing electricity demand,” Dikshit said.

BEE will launch the Bachat Lamp Yojana scheme, aimed at providing CFLs in 20 crore households around India by 2012, once it gets approval from the United Nations. By distributing CFLs, Mathur estimated up to 4,000 MW of power — enough to light up Delhi for a day — can be saved annually.

CFLs is one of many schemes initiated by the government to save up to 10,000 MW of power by 2020 (10 per cent of consumption), which Seema Arora head of climate division at Confederation of Indian Industry termed as achievable

A national mission to achieve the energy efficiency targets will be launched in April.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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