Back to Right Light Proceedings startpage
Energy-Efficient Lighting in Brazil and India: Potential and Issues of Technology Diffusion
Gilberto De Martino JanuzziDepartment of Energy, State University of Campinas, Brazil Ashok Gadgil Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, USA Howard Geller American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, USA M. Anjali Sastry Sloan School of Management, M.I.T., USA Abstract The last several years have seen rapid increases in electricity demand in Brazil and India. Since the beginning of the seventies, these countries have more than tripled their installed capacity. Most of this explosive growth has occurred in the last decade. In particular, residential lighting loads contribute significantly to the peak demand in most of the utilities in the two countries (almost all these utilities are evening-peaking). Therefore, efficient electric lighting represents a resource that could reduce peak demand and conserve energy at a price below the cost of new peak power and new energy generation. This paper presents the costs of conserving electrical energy and reducing peak demand using newly available efficient electric lighting technologies, and compares them with the corresponding costs of conventional generation technologies. As a detailed illustration, we evaluate the costs of conserving electricity in Brazil by means of several high-efficiency lighting technologies and then estimate a supply curve of the conserved electricity for 2010. About 18 TWh could be saved in the year 2010 at costs below the present long-range marginal generation cost. Total savings would represent 3.5% of the official projected electricity consumption and nearly 11% of the total projected Brazilian installed capacity by the year 2010. Although planners in both countries are becoming aware of the substantial reduction in total costs (and in foreign exchange requirements) offered by the new lighting technologies, efficient lighting has not yet achieved significant market penetration in Brazil and India. The experience reveals that the equipment's economic attractiveness from the societal perspective by itself has proven inadequate to promote its wide-scale adoption. This paper addresses some of the non-economic factors that have constrained implementation and suggests ways to overcome them, using as an illustration the Bombay Efficient Electric Lighting Large-scale Experiment (BELLE) which will be launched in 1991 and similar initiatives being implemented in Brazil. Amongst the barriers to energy efficiency encountered are lack of information on new lighting products by consumers and retail sellers, absence of proper institutional support to promote energy efficiency, limited financial incentives and subsidized electricity prices.
|