The Hindu Business Line : CII summit to focus on energy conservation, management

THE sixth edition of Energy Summit, a biennial event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, will have a strong emphasis on energy conservation and management, as it comes in the backdrop of rising prices of fuel and power and a growth in energy demand.

The event, which will be spread over five days, will include a day-long meet on the oil and gas sector, the first time that CII is including this topic in the Energy Summit.

The summit, to be held between October 26 and 30, will open with a two-day programme on national award for excellence in energy management. This will be followed by a two-day conference on energy conservation and renewable energy technology.

Mr K. Vasudevan, Chairman, Energy Summit 2004, told a press conference today that 146 companies from across the country will participate in the two-day national award for excellence in energy management.

In the last three years, he said, many of the companies participating in this programme had reported reduction in specific energy consumption - a factor that determines the efficiency of operations.

For instance, in the cement sector, specific energy consumption had come down by 9-12 per cent, in the pulp and paper sector by 9-10 per cent, by 12-14 per cent in the fertiliser industry and 15-18 per cent in the automobile industry.

Mr G. Jayaraman, Chairman of the national award for excellence in energy management, said that the lessons learnt by the cement industry in energy management were being assimilated by other industrial sectors too. The cement industry had to go in for energy management and energy efficient devices right through the manufacturing process because of rising energy cost, which could not be recovered from the selling price. In India, energy cost contributed as much as 45 per cent of the cost of producing one tonne of cement, while it was just 8 per cent in the US.

According to Mr Vasudevan, the average specific energy consumption in the cement industry in India is 95 kWh a tonne, while the world average is 100 kWh a tonne. The lowest in India is 69 kWh a tonne, against 80 kWh in the rest of the world. The question now is how quickly the cement industry's performance in energy management can be replicated in other sectors. There are three CII committees that are trying to do this for pulp and paper, power plants and engineering sectors. The CII's aim is to have at least three world-class power plants, irrespective of the kind of ownership, by 2008.

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