Stars for energy efficiency

Each appliance will have an energy-rating label pasted at the front of the product so that it is visible to the consumer, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 1, 2006, 19:10:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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From mid-November you will know how much a new electrical appliance will add up to your monthly electrical bill.

Each appliance will have an energy-rating label pasted at the front of the product so that it is visible to the consumer. The lowest rating—one star—product will be the highest energy consumer whereas the highest rating—five star—will consume the lowest.

This will mean that if you buy a five starred appliance as compared to one starred, the monthly energy saving would be equal to 27 per cent.

To start with, the tubelights will come with energy efficiency rating within a fortnight, said Ajay Mathur, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ministry of Power.

It will be followed by refrigerators in three weeks and then air-conditioners and television sets.

"Slowly by early next year most of the popular electrical appliances will have energy efficiency rating," he said.

According to Mathur, the bureau has divided the energy efficiency into five levels, each level categorised by a star.

"Each star demonstrates the amount of electricity an electricity appliance will consume. The stars will give uniform consumption pattern for a particular category like refrigerators," he said. But will differ for other categories, like one star will have different energy consumption pattern for a television and an air-conditioner.

Already, the popular brands of refrigerators, air-conditioners and tubelights have got the energy efficiency rating done from the bureau.

The bureau followed a three-level process. At the first level, the tests were to be conducted at the company's own testing facility. The second tests were done at the competitors' lab. And, the final tests were conducted at government approved national testing laboratory.

"This was done to prevent any discrepancy in rating and to counter accusation by rival companies," Mathur explained.

When asked whether the rating will have any impact on the pricing of products, Mathur was of the view that stiff competition and strong market forces will not allow the prices to rise.

Appliances are just the first step in introducing energy efficiency labelling in products India. Mathur said the next in the line are buildings, a source of huge energy consumption.

"We have proposed to introduce energy efficiency systems in the building bye-laws. The buyers will have to tell the average monthly power bill expected by living in the accommodation," he said.

The bureau is working on different models that can be suggested to builders to make buildings more energy efficient. "It is required as housing sector will be the one of the biggest consumers of power in future. Even 5-10 per cent of electricity saved will be a huge national resource," said Dr RK Pauchauri, Director-General of The Energy and Research Institute.

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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