The Hindu Business Line : `Efficiency in usage, R&D vital for energy independence'

THE Planning Commission member overseeing the energy sector, Mr Kirit S. Parikh, said the country's quest for energy independence rests on four major issues - imparting efficiency in energy use, inducing competition for conservation, intensifying efforts to gassify coal, and stepping up research and development efforts to develop energy-saving equipment and appliances.

Inaugurating the fourth Petro India 2006 on `Towards energy independence: Challenges & opportunities,' organised by the India Energy Forum in association with Petrofed and Petrotech, Mr Parikh underlined the need for injecting competition in energy use since those in authority or whose energy requirements were being provided for had no incentive to save the vital resource. It was, therefore, imperative to build pressure and initiate public action to force people to use energy efficiently, he said.

An active government policy, which specifies norms for manufacturing energy-efficient appliances and machines, also needs to be introduced so that energy efficiency levels can be stepped up, he said.

Mr Parikh said, "Energy independence has assumed importance because we do not like to subject ourselves to pressures of any kind from energy suppliers, although it is eminently possible, at some cost, to have a stockpile of foreign exchange reserves to buy all our energy requirements and thus build immunity from external pressure."

Elaborating on the scale of the problem, Mr Parikh said India was consuming 500 million tonnes of oil equivalent of all forms of energy. This would rise to 1,700 million tonnes of oil equivalent annually in 25 years. While the use of renewables and conservation would bring down the total requirement to 1,150 million tones, the gap between requirement and availability would still be significantly large. Mr B. K. Chaturvedi, Cabinet Secretary, said the need of the hour was to intensify exploration in a "mission mode" through the use of modern techniques of interpretation of oil and gas finds as the exploration rounds so far were not up to expectations.