By IANS,
New Delhi : Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai spent $12,000 once to upgrade its electricity system, and is saving $17,000 a year on power bills. Many firms don’t even have to pay any money upfront. They just save on the power bill, and pay a percentage of that saving to the expert.
In the last few years, at least 26 of these expert firms, called energy service companies (ESCO), have sprung up in India. G.C. Datta Roy of one ESCO, DSCL Energy Services, expects the Indian ESCO market to multiply 10-fold this year from Rs.86.4 crore ($17.7 million) in 2007.
He was speaking at the launch of a report on the investment potential of ESCOs. Called Powering Up, the report has been prepared by the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) and was launched by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here Friday.
“India’s energy demand is expected to more than double by 2030. There is a dramatic need for domestic and international energy efficiency technology providers and equipment manufacturers to develop innovative ways to conserve energy,” said Robin Murphy, WRI vice president of external relations.
Datta Roy said just about any building in India could save 38-76 percent of its energy bill, and “we don’t only say how to do it, we do it ourselves, under guarantee”. He added that six commercial buildings in Delhi and 160 municipalities in Gujarat had now approached various ESCOs to improve their energy efficiency.
Murphy pointed out that energy efficiency was the biggest and probably easiest way to reduce India’s emission of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that is leading to climate change.
In the Green Investor Meet organised by CII before the release of the report, Dinesh Rai, secretary in the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, said: “The green sector in India can evolve as a strong base of entrepreneurship, job creation, economic development, production and exports. India has the potential to create nine lakh (900,000) jobs in the biomass sector”.
S. Raghupathy, head of CII’s Green Business Centre, said India already has “the second largest green building footprint. Around 320 establishments are being developed or are in the process of development as green building projects spread across 200 million square feet”.