World Bank funds Indian project on energy-efficient fans

The World Bank is providing $50 million to the government’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency to produce five million super-energy efficient fans that would help India save 100mw power every day. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 21, 2013, 01:50:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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You can soon buy a fan that will bring down your monthly power bill by up to 50%.

The World Bank is providing $50 million to the government’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) to produce five million super-energy efficient fans that would help India save 100mw power every day.

A super-energy efficient fan would consume 35 watts as against 70 watts consumed by a normal fan.

“The aim is to help the Indian fan industry adopt new technology for producing energy efficient fans in the next few years,” said Onno Ruhl, World Bank’s India director.

Fans, which account for about 15% of an average household energy bill, are the second most common household electrical equipment sold in India. Its market is growing at an annual rate of 12%.

Unlike other electrical appliances, fans have penetrated across different income groups and make a significant contribution to any household’s electricity consumption. “It is logical to invest in something which has a vast use,” Ruhl said.

The pilot aims to provide finance incentives to fan manufacturers to be selected by BEE to adopt energy efficient technologies.

With this project, the government would try to give fillip to its National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE) which hasn’t taken off as desired. The mission aims to save 19 gigawatts by introducing energy efficient appliances to reduce carbon emissions by 98 million tonnes by 2014-15.

A senior BEE official said they would soon be finalising financial and technological parameters for the manufacturers to adopt energy efficient technologies.

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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