Energy is the key to the development of any country. Clean energy empowers people and helps in improving education, health and employment opportunities. Today, the biggest problem faced by our country is scarcity of energy, leading to frequent power cuts ranging from a few minutes to several hours depending upon the place where one resides. Even though the government is trying hard to cope with this gap in demand and supply, it will take years before we become an energy-adequate country.

The maximum load on the electricity grid and demand for energy comes from those living in cities. Broadly, a look at the energy-consumption pattern reveals that the industry consumes approximately 40 percent of the generated energy, while the second biggest consumer are our buildings that exhaust nearly 25 percent of the share of generated energy. Moreover, if we consider the pattern of energy-generating resources in India, the situation is grim as our dependence on fossil fuels is very high.

About 85 percent of the total energy generated in India comes from fossil fuels. Coal contributes a majority of the share and the balance comes from oil and gas. Fossil fuels cannot last forever and will eventually deplete. Also, energy generated by burning fossil fuels is not clean and creates substantial pollution. The uncertainty regarding global politics and its impact on the price of oil cannot be determined. Today, India ranks fifth as one of the most polluting countries, accounting for approximately 4 percent of the green house gas emissions. For every unit of energy generated, we release 1 kg of CO2 (carbon dioxide), and on an average, we as a nation, consume 500 billion units of energy every day.

How can this pollution be reduced? One, by conserving the generated energy, as every unit saved is equal to every unit generated, and second, by generating energy from renewable energy resources. The second option involves investment and requires an evaluation of which renewable energy resource is most suitable and the places from which it can be obtained. On a more practical note, everyone can contribute in a small way by simply conserving energy. Replacing the electrical bulb with a compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb is one of the measures. The advantage of CFL is that it consumes only one-fifth of the energy consumed by incandescent lamps or more than half of that consumed by the conventional tube light. It also offers additional benefits like space savings, good quality light, low heat, aesthetically designed luminaries and long product life.

Hypothetically, let us consider a 2BHK flat with two toilets that uses four fittings of 100 watts for the rooms and two fittings of 25 watts for the toilets. The same can be replaced by four fittings of 20 watts and 5 watts CFLs for the rooms and toilets, respectively, saving close to 1,300 units annually. This will contribute towards conserving energy as well as saving more than Rs 2,000 annually. The second way to conserve energy is by replacing conventional electrical geysers by solar water heating systems. The major contributor to peak load demand of energy in cities is electrical geysers that are operated on electrical coils in the range of 2 to 4 KW, thereby consuming 2 to 4 units per hour.

Shifting to a solar-based water heater will not only reduce peak load demand but also help in reducing pollution, making it a commercially viable option. The life of the equipment is approximately 10 years, and the cost of the equipment is recovered within three years when compared with the charges that consumers pay to the state electricity board. Moreover, the government is also providing soft loan facilities at the rate of 2 percent, which are dispersed by all major nationalised banks, to encourage more consumers to switch to environment-friendly water heating systems.

The author is a Business Manager, Schott Glass India Pvt Ltd