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For a green, clean world

A Triple-Sector Approach to fast-track energy efficiency is in the best interest of India

H
ow do you start to solve the biggest challenge
facing mankind? Of course, by working
together and creating an inter-dependent
system of innovative business model, aggressive pol-
icies and creating a low carbon culture in our soci-
ety. As the infographic below shows, a problem
as complex as climate change can only be solved
through triple-sector collaboration where govern-
ment, industry and non-profit organisation needs
to work collaboratively, synergistically, and per-
sistently to solve the problem. A recent example
worth emulating is the progress and solutions that
have been made under Montreal Protocol where the
global triple-sector community has come together to
solve ozone depletion challenge initially and more
recently global warming challenges as a result of the
use of refrigerants – a lifeline for the modern world
in a warming planet.
Energy at the heart of climate change
challenge: In its 2021 World Energy Outlook
report, International Energy Agency has voiced
concerns that today’s pledges by all countries close
less than 20 per cent of the gap to the Net Zero by
2050 scenario – an equilibrium state that many cli-
mate scientists and policy makers believe is needed
to counter the threat of climate change in a mean-
ingful manner. At the same time, IEA also unequiv-
ocally says that demand side interventions in the
form of energy efficiency, which it calls the first fuel,
is one of the most cost-effective technology mea-
sures available today to help bridge the ambition
gap. Why is this so significant?
Energy efficiency remains the cheapest, fastest
and cleanest form of interventions not only to move
Dr. SAT ISH KU M A R
The author is
Executive Director
and President,
Alliance for an
Energy-Efficient
Economy
from pledge to action but also to create a thriving
business ecosystem that will help create India an
energy-efficient economy with millions of green
jobs, new start-ups deploying latest digitalisation,
artificial intelligence and machine learning tech-
niques that can make our appliances more energy
efficient, buildings more thermally comfortable and
sustainable, industry more globally competitive and
our cities and urban landscape cleaner, greener and
more people friendly.
Embodied and operational energy: Energy
is consumed twice by most appliances, buildings,
vehicles, smartphones, etc. that are the staples of
people living in the modern world. The first is the
embodied energy that is used to manufacture or
build these objects and the second is the energy con-
sumed by these objects themselves. So, Tata Steel,
ACC Cement, Hindalco, Maruti Auto, Vedanta etc.
all play a very important role in producing either the
raw materials or the widget themselves; their process
efficiency and the energy intensity (Joules/tonne of
steel or cement or Joules/Maruti Swift for example)
will have a huge bearing on the embodied energy
of cars or appliances or homes that we build today.
While there is increasing pressure to quantify the
energy or carbon intensity of the products, it is a
non-trivial task to capture energy consumed during
the entire lifecycle of manufacturing. Yet, companies
are facing the pressure either from the environmen-
tally conscious governments as they enact policies
such as Extended Producer Responsibility which is
holding the manufacturers responsible through cra-
dle to grave or production through disposal/recy-
cling of the products or by shareholders asking the
companies to report quantitative data showing how
well they are doing on the Environment-Social-Gov-
ernance (ESG) framework. Since ESG performance
is starting to affect the share price of companies as
institutional investors such as pension funds, etc. are
asking for more transparency and standardised met-
rics to show how efficient their manufacturing pro-
cesses are. Suddenly, circular economy and resource
efficiency are no longer fancy buzzwords reserved
for avant-garde companies but are being discussed
in the board rooms of majority of the Fortune 500
companies.
Operational energy, on the other hand, is a rela-
tively easier concept to understand. It is no surprise
then that most efforts, such as building energy code,
standards and labelling of appliances and buildings,
fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, etc., to pro-
mote energy efficiency have largely focused on reg-
ulating operational energy use. Performance metrics

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B U S I N E S S I N D I A X T H E M AG A Z I N E O F T H E C O R P O R AT E WO R L D

such as kWh/m2/year or KMs/litre or kW/tonnes of

refrigeration are units of operational energy that are
used to define the relative energy efficiency of build-
ings, cars or an air-conditioner respectively.
As decarbonisation of the power sector gains
steam with prices of renewable technologies on a
long and sustained downward trend, embodied
energy, which has largely remained unregulated
is coming under the scanner of policy makers and
companies are already taking steps to stay ahead of
the curve and taking proactive steps to reduce the
embodied energy content. It is also hoped that tech-
nologies such as blockchain would help in clearly
capturing the input and output of energy during the
material production, transport and manufacturing
cycle with clear attribution to overcome the chal-
lenge of accurately and comprehensively capturing
energy use at each step.
Ensuring quality of life and energy secu-
rity with cost-effective and environment-
friendly technologies: India is also faced with a
massive challenge of providing thermal comfort to
a billion lives and better livelihoods to our farmers.
With room air-conditioner penetration at less than electricity. In industrial and manufacturing facili-
10 per cent in Indian homes and running cost of ties, around 75 per cent of industrial motors are used
air-conditioners out of reach for most Indian house- to run pumps, fans, and compressors, a category of
holds, we need to think about the next generation machinery that is highly susceptible to major effi-
of cooling appliances; super-efficient fans, water- ciency improvements.
and energy-efficient evaporative coolers and next On the one hand, companies such as ABB, Arm-
generation of air-conditioners that can seamlessly strong Fluid Technologies, Carrier, Danfoss, Green-
function as evaporative coolers or air-conditioners tech Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Schneider
depending on outdoor conditions, use variable fre- Electric, Smart Joules, Tabreed and 75F have the
quency drive, natural and low-GWP refrigerants that knowledge, technologies and solutions to make our
will help achieve the dreams of hundreds of mil- homes, offices, cities and industries achieve energy
lions to sleep comfortably in the sweltering heat of efficiency that will be 2-3x better than what is cur-
Indian summer. rently the case through the use of smart sensors
Similarly, India cannot afford a loss of approxi- and switchgears, motors and drives, pumps, solu-
mately 15 per cent of the fruits and vegetables that it tions to power today’s energy hungry data centres
produces because of poor cold chain infrastructure. & HVAC&R and cold chain industry making them
Not only do we need to create an uninterrupted and more sustainable, energy efficient & climate friendly.
unbroken cold chain infrastructure of packhouses, On the other hand, Infosys embraces energy effi-
reefer vans, ripening chambers that will help reduce ciency as the foundational philosophy to design
the food losses significantly but will also enable the super-efficient new buildings and net-zero energy
farm to fork movement of post-harvest horticultural and water campuses, undertake deep retrofits in
products in a sustainable manner. existing buildings and deploy accurate monitoring
Energy efficient technology companies today can to ensure long term energy performance leading
make super-efficient appliances such as ceiling fans, to one of the largest enterprise-level retrofit pro-
refrigerators and room air-conditioners and LED grammes in the world.
lamps that are critical to ensuring a comfortable and If India has to become a leader in these green
safe quality of life for rich and poor alike living in and clean technologies, then government must
rural or urban India. These appliances use energy- substantially increase budget for energy efficiency
efficient motors, natural and green refrigerants, heat staff, programmes and schemes at both the Centre
and electricity conducting metals and IoT technol- and the state and city level, our policies and stan-
ogies to deliver the same outputs at 1/3rd or even dards must start to encourage those businesses by
1/4th of the energy use and environmental impact providing incentives, tax breaks and production
than conventional technologies. While mostly hid- linked incentives that would allow them to inno-
den from public view, electric motors are embed- vate and manufacture the next generation of low-
ded in almost every built environment. They power carbon technologies at an affordable cost while
a vast range of applications fundamental to mod- creating green jobs that are so essential to creating
ern life and consume over 45 per cent of the world’s a thriving energy-efficient economy. X

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