Cluster Pulse awarded World Bank-SIDBI project

Economic development agency, Cluster Pulse has bagged a World Bank/SIDBI project for an energy efficiency market access in Ankleshwar. The World Bank with the support from Global Environmental Facility (GEF) has designed a small and medium enterprise (SME) energy efficiency project as a part of the GEF Programmatic Framework for India.

"The objective of this project is keeping the international buyers demand in mind, to increase adoption for energy efficiency investments in small and medium enterprises and to build their capacity to access commercial finance. This project is to be co-implemented in the industrial region of Ankleshwar by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) and Cluster Pulse," said Jagat Shah, founder and CEO of the Ahmedabad-based firm.

Among other things, the World Bank project comprises activities to build capacity and awareness, marketing and outreach effort to Ankleshwar cluster, technical assistance for energy audit: training, BEE Certification and enlistment, specialised support to financial institutions, unit-level support to SMEs in accessing finance, and vendor outreach, enlistment and support.

The project will also entail conducting activities to increase investment in energy efficiency, apart from preparing detailed project report as part of the energy efficiency project development support. According to Shah, though, large numbers of SMEs in Gujarat are located in clusters and have large potential for energy savings, there is not much authentic information and data available with respect to their energy consumption and energy saving opportunities.

"Majority of SMEs are run by entrepreneurs who are leanly staffed with trained technical and managerial persons to deploy and capture energy efficiency practice to reduce manufacturing cost and increase marketing and competitive edge. Therefore, it will be useful to build their energy efficiency awareness by funding/subsidising need based studies in large number of units in the SMEs and giving market expectation advise, energy conservation recommendations including technology upgradation opportunities," Shah added. The World Bank and SIDBI envisage that such interventions supported by diagnostic studies and pilot projects at cluster level focusing on energy efficiency, energy conservation and technology up gradation would be helpful in addressing the cluster specific problems and enhancing energy efficiency in SMEs.

Meanwhile, according to the implementing agency, the cluster structure in India represents a good opportunity for widespread adoption of energy efficiency opportunities to reduce transaction costs as standard products (technical and financial) can be offered to larger number of clients.