Ask anyone about energy and the first words that get associated with them are “clean,” “solar,” “wind,” “electric.” Unfortunately, the word that doesn’t often come up is efficient. Energy efficiency simply means using less energy to perform the same task – that is, eliminating energy waste. This comes with a number of benefits: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing demand for energy imports, and lowering our costs on a household and economy-wide level. While renewable energy technologies also help accomplish these objectives, improving energy efficiency is the cheapest – and often the most immediate – way to reduce the use of fossil fuels. There are enormous opportunities for efficiency improvements in every sector of the economy, whether it is buildings, transportation, industry, or energy generation. 

To improve how much to reduce the energy consumption level to, we first need to know how much energy we’re consuming. India is the world’s third-largest energy consuming country, thanks to rising incomes and improving standards of living. Energy use has doubled since 2000, with 80% of demand still being met by coal, oil, and solid biomass. On a per capita basis, India’s energy use and emissions are less than half the world average, as are other key indicators such as vehicle ownership, steel, and cement output. Over the coming years, millions of Indian households are set to buy new appliances, air conditioning units and vehicles. To meet growth in electricity demand over the next twenty years, India will need to add a power system the size of the European Union to what it has now. The Government of India has over the last few years launched several initiatives, such as, setting up the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), founded in 2002, which works with state governments to improve their energy efficiency needs particularly in domestic and rural regions, and the Energy Efficiency Services Limited, founded in 2009, to focus on making domestic lighting more efficient. To give one example of what this means for India, looking at constructions as just one example, the Energy Conservation Building Code is estimated to help in achieving 50 per cent reduction in energy use by 2030. Another promising initiative has been the Smart Cities Mission, first announced in 2015. According to the BEE 300 mn tons of CO2 were saved, thanks to this initiative.