Energy Saving News
Indian Parliament Boosts Energy Efficiency
THE INDIAN Parliament has passed the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill 2010 to provide a major boost to energy efficiency in the sub-continent.
This Bill supplies the legal framework to kickstart the ‘Perform, Achieve and Trade’ (PAT) scheme, which sets out the energy efficiency improvement targets for larger energy-intensive industries and facilities over three years.
The PAT scheme provides for the issuing of energy saving certificates to the industries that consume less than the permitted energy, thus enabling them to sell their earned 'spare' credits to the industrial companies that have consumed more than their permitted energy.
This has been held to be an important mechanism within the Indian National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency, which is just one of eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change.
The director general of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ajay Mathur, said to the Financial Express of India:
"It’s an important development for creating an enabling environment for enhancing energy efficiency on a large scale.”
Industrial and larger companies that fail to meet their targets and/or buy credits will face heavy fines, which under the amended Act will range from Rs 10,000 to Rs 10 lakh and from Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000 for each day the offence persists.
Thursday 19th August 2010
