India has 17.9% untapped energy-efficiency potential: Study

India has approximately 17.9 per cent of untapped electricity-efficiency potential and there is a need for more energy-efficient equipments to be made available in the domestic market, according to a study.
"India has approximately 17.9 per cent of untapped electricity-efficiency potential and optimising industrial motor-driven systems could deliver overall savings up to 60 per cent on industrial electricity consumption...," Siemens Financial Services said in a research finding.
Siemens Financial Services, a subsidiary of Siemens AG offering financing services, conducted a research among the global top 20 industrial equipment manufacturers.
The report said that in order to remain competitive in the future, the manufacturing sector must continually innovate and reinvent itself.

"In particular, electricity consumption and prices have risen substantially over the last decade. Electricity usage in the manufacturing sector has undergone huge growth over the last 40 years, rising three times faster than overall energy use, and now represents over a quarter of industrial energy consumption," it said.
The research further provides an estimate on the unused potential for electricity-efficiency (usage and cost-savings, expressed as a proportion of total electricity consumption) in the manufacturing sector, putting India in the second position following Russia and ahead of China in electricity-efficiency potential.

"Investing in electricity-efficiency technologies not only helps cut energy bills, manufacturing costs and carbon emissions, new equipment often brings productivity and capacity improvements as an added bonus, improving business performance and competitiveness," Siemens Financial Services Chief Executive Officer Sunil Kapoor said.

"The global manufacturing sector is inevitably electrifying. Resulting in electricity becoming a pathway to a sustainable energy system and allowing greater levels of automation and digitalisation in the manufacturing process," he said.
Access to finance to fund investments in energy-efficient equipment remains relatively restricted in many countries, especially in India where there is a large base of smaller and medium-sized manufacturing operations, he added.
Such tailored financing arrangements will prove fundamental to the Indian manufacturing sector in terms of energy-efficiency and thus, will boost the government's 'Make in India' initiative, placing India as a manufacturing hub, Kapoor further said.