The Hindu Business Line : PM approves national mission on energy efficiency

According to an official communiqué approving the Mission, the Prime Minister said that, “This Mission will enable about Rs 75,000 crore worth of transactions in energy efficiency. In doing so, it will, by 2015, help save about five per cent of our annual energy consumption, and nearly 100 million tonne of carbon dioxide every year.”

The Mission is the second of the eight under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change to be approved by the Council.

In his opening remarks, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said, “...The implementation of this mission will also be a powerful signal to the international community that we are willing to contribute in a significant manner, to meeting the global challenge of climate change.”

The Prime Minister also emphasised “it must also have inbuilt provisions for monitoring and evaluation so as to ensure transparency, accountability and responsiveness.”

PAT mechanism

Under the Mission is the ‘Perform, Achieve and Trade’ (PAT) mechanism which would assign energy efficiency improvement targets to the country’s most energy-intensive industrial units, with the provision of allowing them to retain any energy-efficiency improvements in excess of their target in the form of Energy Savings Certificates, called ESCerts. Units will also be allowed to use purchased ESCerts to meet their targets.

Other initiatives

Other Mission initiatives include expanded use of the carbon market to help achieve market transformation towards more energy-efficient equipment and appliances, and the creation of two funds to help channel investment into energy-efficiency projects.

One of the funds, the Partial Risk Guaranty Facility, will provide back-to-back guarantees to banks for loans to energy-efficiency projects to reduce the perceived risks of these projects.

The other fund, a Venture Capital Fund, would support investment in the manufacturing of energy-efficient products and provision of energy-efficiency services.

The Council also approved the selection of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) as the Mission implementing agency, and of a new corporate entity, Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, to carry out the market-related actions of the Mission.

BEE would be strengthened to support Mission implementation. It is estimated that the budgetary support for Mission implementation, including seed capital for the two funds, would be Rs 295 crore in the current Plan period.

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