India goes deeper into climate change mitigation

To my regret, I don’t write much on how India is willing to mitigate climate change as I lack information. But today’s the occasion to repair this as I came across two different articles on how the world’s largest democracy is working on this issue.

The country will indeed replace by 2012 400 millions of incandescent light bulbs by CFLs. to TreeHugger, the energy savings and resultant carbon emissions savings will be about 55 million tonnes per year.

This is the occasion for me to present you a website I discovered. India Climate Solutions provides great information on the country’s local initiatives.

First and foremost, let us examine the replacement of the bulbs. To the Indian Press Information Bureau:

Lighting accounts for about 20% of electricity consumption and has a significant potential for reduction of the load without compromising on the lumen output by use of energy efficient lighting in place of incandescent bulbs.

CFLs provide that energy-efficient alternative to the incandescent lamp by using one-fifth as much electricity as an incandescent lamp to provide the same level of illumination. Government’s efforts for promotion of CFLs are having the desired impact on the market with the sales of CFLs in India having grown from about 20 million in 2003 to around 200 million in 2008.

However, the penetration of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) in household sector remains low at about 5% -10% largely due to the high price of the CFLs, which is 8-10 times the cost of incandescent bulbs. The Bachat Lamp Yojana focuses on this first cost barrier to reduce the cost of CFLs to that of incandescent bulbs.

The scheme was launched today by the Union Minister of Power, Shri Sushilkumar Shinde in New Delhi. The Bachat Lamp Yojana promotes replacement of inefficient bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) by leveraging the sale of Certified Emission Rights (CERs) under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.

The scheme provides a unique platform for a robust public-private partnership between the Government of India, Private sector CFL suppliers and State level Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOMs) and provides a the framework to distribute high quality CFLs at about Rs.15 per piece to the households of the country.

Under the scheme only 60 Watt and 100 Watt incandescent Lamps have to be replaced with 11 to 15 Watt and 20 -25 Watt CFLs respectively.

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A recent article by Thomas Friedman, the famous Op-Ed columnist of the New York Times – and author of Hot, Flat and Crowded – enabled me to discover a most interesting initiative.

India Climate Solutions‘ goal is to enable us to discover  the green initiatives via a road trip of two youngsters done in an electric car.

As Ecogeek noted:

The students were driving a Reva electric car that had been souped up – the original battery was replaced with one could deliver more kwh; combined with the solar panels installed on the roof, this gave the vehicle a range of 150 km (12kwh) per 6 hour charge.

(…) Freeplay has come out with two devices – an LED lamp and a radio – which can be powered by a hand crank. A minute of cranking yields an hour of LED light from the lamp and an hour of music on the radio.

(…) a development in Bangalore which is building homes with the goal of zero emissions. The houses are built out of local, sustainable materials, and they all include power meters which allow the residents to monitor their energy consumption.

To conclude, I would like to call on my Indian readers I would be glad to read out more on local iniatives. So, if you have blogs or websites addresses – or even articles – don’t hesitate to send them to me ! Thanks in advance !