India is one of the few countries that has a ministry of environment and non-conventional energy. It has over the years deployed large budgets to incentive the shift to solar, wind and non-conventional hydro power. It has also set in motion programmes like subsidizing the adoption of LEDs in lighting use, which have been quite successful. Others in the same vein have been star rating of equipment, laying out better standard in the use of energy and in overall performance of refrigerators, air conditioners and in electrical equipment in general. Given the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEEs) approach of interacting with industry, and with a scientific orientation, the standards have spread with little cost to the economy. There has much success in bringing down the GHG emissions from white goods of a wide variety. The subsidization of CFLs and now LEDs has led to near total adoption of LEDs, high efficiency vapour lamps, which should have reduced the emission per lumen almost proportionately with the reduction in energy input. The dynamism of technology and the fast growth of the Indian white goods markets have also helped.

However, when the actors are dispersed and are numerous its success have been meagre. This for instance has been the case with regard to construction. Architectural approaches in India remain extremely energy inefficient over the life cycle and heavy in the use of materials as well. The archaic standard designs of PWDs, the fact that the architectural profession does not have an engineering approach, and are paid on a percentage of construction cost, and functionality in contrast to “form and fashion” being of less value in “premier” high profile housing and institutional construction, are all parts of the problem. “Green” designs that are in the limelight, are almost entirely “small”, and veer to the romantic and traditional, are land intensive, have entirely bypassed multistory construction, and are out of question in densely populated urban locales. This set of factors limits the actual impact of a large number of highly motivated “green” architects, whose works remain small and more the exception. Lack of standard designs (the contrast with the town house innovation in the Western World during the middle of their economic transformation) also contributes. Independent house owners have to depend upon on an architect (with all his idiosyncrasies) or on masons and their “designs”. Low FSI with which Indian cities plan also impede functional architecture, and add to the inefficiency, for the same standard of living since the volume covered to surface area tends to be very small making air-conditioning very inefficient, when the need for air-conditioning is the highest in India. It is only the very low incomes of people that has kept the unit demand low for electricity for household cooling. In some of the richer cities like Delhi, the AC demand has been growing despite the very prices for households using ACs³.

Perhaps the most important success has been in the areas of wind and solar power generation. In the case of wind the potential had been underestimated, because the CEA had worked with tower heights of only 50 mts, and with highly restrictive assumptions on the land availability. With higher 100m towers and with more realistic assumptions the potential went up and there has been significant development of wind power. Today the constraint is more in terms of scheduling, since often even wind generation has to be backed down, given the grid and demand limitations, not to speak of idling of thermal power plants.

In the case of solar, the developments have been quite remarkable. The first big push came with high feed-in tariffs which was almost at double the levels at which California at the same time procured solar power. Some 3000 MW may have been added at these unnecessarily high tariffs. The episode, though, may have had the benefit of bringing world attention to the commitment to solar in India. When the same gave way to bid-in tariffs with the ...