Rivalry Hampers Bombay Project
Rivalry Hampers Bombay Project
Animosity among organizations has crippled the utilization of efficient lighting technologies that could ease the load on India's groaning power generation system.
Every summer, power outages torment residents of Indian cities. In India, most lighting use coincides with the system peak in the early evening, and lighting therefore drives the expansion of the electricity generation system. Surprisingly, there is no indigenous production of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) in India.
To pave the way for such production, two non-resident Indian energy economists, Ashok Gadgil and Anjali Sastry, proposed a large demonstration program. Their progam, the Bombay Efficient Lighting Large-scale Experiment (BELLE), sought to replace 100 000 incandescent, 60-watt light bulbs with 15-watt CFLs by leasing them to households. Says Gadgil: "The manufacturers who are considering CFL production today are, despite the huge potential market, uncertain about the willingness of the market to adopt CFLs on a large scale. The program would demonstrate a way to overcome the customer reluctance".
However, the project failed to obtain crucial foreign exchange assistance from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Project proponents allege this was because of pressure exerted on the committee set up to review BELLE.
A consortium was set up to develop a strategy for the program, including Philips India, one utility-the Bombay Suburban Electric Supply (BSES)-and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR). Philips India was to buy CFLs from Philips Illuminacion in Mexico and supply these to the electric utility, which would then make them available to consumers on a hire-purchase basis. IGIDR was to be responsible for the overall design and coordination of the experiment.
The lease installments were to be paid to the utility along with electricity bills. The charges were to cover the cost of the CFLs and their installation, plus the interest for the four-year lease period. Each CFL installed was expected to result in a savings larger than the leasing charges.
J. P. Painuly, head of IGIDR's energy division, says the widespread use of CFLs would result in a "reduction in peak demand, as this largely corresponds with the duration of the peak residential lighting load." The power thus saved, he says, could be diverted to industrial consumers who are charged higher rates. "Lower peak loads would also mean substantially less investment in power generation equipment", he adds.
SHORT-LIVED BONHOMIE
To enable a detailed evaluation of the project, US AID initially went along with the consortium's proposal to use 100000 CFLs. However, the bonhomie was short-lived. The committee evaluating BELLE included officials of the Union Power Ministry, public enterprises in the power sector and what Gadgil calls "one private organization in the energy sector which regarded energy efficiency as its own purview". These bodies, maintain Gadgil and Sastry, saw BELLE as "a threat" to their dominance in energy research. Though they do not name the organization, other members of the BELLE consortium maintain that the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) "saw to it that BELLE did not get USAID's approval".
Opposition to BELLE resulted in the review committee successively scaling down the promised assistance. Within six months, the number of CFLs to be used was reduced to 22000. Besides, both government as well as TERI representatives criticized the fact that only one manufacturer had been selected to participate. "How could a multinational be allowed to be the sole beneficiary of the US aid?" Pachauri asks.
While TERI spokesperson B. Natarajan claims the organization had objected to the project on technical grounds, participants in the BELLE consortium claim that TERI was more interested in "hijacking" the project. They point to TERI's successful lobbying to get a second manufacturer admitted. And predictably, once they were members of the consortium, Apar began to press for TERI's inclusion. To counter this move, the original promoters of BELLE brought three more manufacturers into the consortium.
The devaluation of the Rupee altered the situation dramatically. Unwilling to share the higher tab for CFL imports, all manufacturers withdrew from the project, except Philips India, which was willing to put up the additional 2.8 million rupees (~ $92000). However, at this point, just as the BELLE consortium had begun to feel confident, the review committee rejected the project.
Painuly says BELLE's rejection was based on the erroneous argument that several manufacturers would soon be producing CFLs in India on a commercial basis. This argument "indicated a lack of understanding of the project's objectives". Moreover, he points out, Indian manufacturers' plans to produce CFLs remain on paper.
TERI director Pachauri contends, "CFLs had not been successfully tried out in any developing country. Even in the developed countries, their use was limited to large commercial establishments". Gadgil, however, points out that there were sufficient examples of successful controlled experiments using CFLs, of which the review committee members were well aware. "In fact," he asserts, "the relevance of the BELLE approach is indicated by its adoption in several countries where the consumer profile may be rather similar to that of Bombay." In some of these, such as Mexico, Hungary, Ukraine, and Egypt, plans for replication and refinement of the project have been drawn up.
KEY TO SUCCESS
J. S. Gururaja, advisor to the Union Ministry of non-Conventional Energy Resources, who also served on the USAID review committee, says, "It was unfortunate that the BELLE project failed to take off." In his opinion, the active involvement of electricity companies, manufacturers, and consumers is the key to the success of any program that intends to introduce norms of higher efficiency than the prevalent ones.
But such opinions of BELLE are not expressed by those who decided its fate. A joint secretary at the Indian Union Power Ministry, speaking on the condition the he remain anonymous, said: "When we at the power ministry are making our own efforts at energy conservation, it would have been more appropriate to have first put forward the BELLE proposal to the ministry to identify the participants and beneficiaries."
Was it merely hurt feelings that killed the BELLE project?
Koshy Cherail
This article is an adapted version of one published in the Indian environmental magazine Down to Earth.
Postscript: Recently, three manufacturers have stated that they plan to start production of CFLs in India. The three are Philips India, an Osram/Surya Roshni joint-venture, and an Indian/Japanese (rumored to be Toshiba) joint-venture. However, to date there is no information on definite decisions to invest in such production.