India, through its company Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), has performed exceedingly well in terms of vastly improving access to LED lighting while reducing their cost drastically, the International Energy Agency said.
Indonesia next“The LED programme by EESL has been so successful that IEA is partnering with it to take the programme global,” Paul Simons, Deputy Executive Director at the IEA said while speaking at the World Sustainable Development Summit. “In particular, we would like to try this model out in Indonesia. We believe this is a best practice that must be shared.”
The price at which EESL has been purchasing LED lights to distribute under the government’s Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (Ujala) scheme has been consistently falling over the last couple of years. The company purchased LEDs at Rs.310 per piece in 2014, and the price fell to Rs.55 as of March 2016.
Along with this, production has also been ramped up to about four crore per month from the 10 lakh a month that were produced two years ago. LED lights consumes 80 per cent less electricity than incandescent bulbs.
“The 175 GW of renewable energy capacity target by 2022 will not be a problem for India,” Upendra Tripathy, Secretary in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said while also speaking at the event.
Banks liberal“Capital is the important thing. But we are in talks with various organisations like the ADB and World Bank. The banks have been very liberal so far.”
Ashok Lavasa, Finance and Expenditure Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, highlighted the importance of energy conservation as well as energy efficiency, pointing out that conservation was by far the cheaper option. “We could be reaching a stage where renewable energy, particularly solar, becomes cheap enough that distribution companies would start buying that energy (in preference to) energy from conventional sources.”
But at the moment, any discussion on efficiency and conservation have to be informed by the ground realities faced in India of availability, accessibility, and affordability of energy, he said.
