Energy is a basic necessity for survival and a critical factor affecting economic development and employment. Energy crisis has drawn attention of planners, on the impact of energy costs on economic growth, industrial production, employment, etc. Most of the regions in the developing countries depend on bioresources.  Deforestation and desertification are threatening traditional energy sources and subsistence pattern of agriculture, thus starving the rural sector of biomass fuels at the same time more efficient energy sources are needed for the sustainable development of a region.

The term sustainable development was coined by the UN Bruntland committee to describe a development, which satisfies the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The sound environmental policy focuses on the environmental aspects and is a part of wider concern aimed at well being and living standards of human species. Sustainable development demands the clean and pollution free environment and enshrines the good quality natural resources for both present and in the future. Energy, biodiversity and physical space are the critical resources for present and future human demands. The international community has espoused the objective of sustainable development in various agreements, which includes- Agenda 21 (Rio ’92), Convention on Biological Diversity and the Climatic Conference at Kyoto recently.

The seeds of sustainable development were sown during 1972 Stockholm Conference, but unfortunately it turned out to be a dialogue of the deaf between rich and poor. And subsequent twenty years has seen environmental degradation that was never taken before. Rivers were foamed with pollutants, cities were invisible with smoke and smog, forest were degraded to large extent, many of our tanks and lakes were filled with silt, desertification was a common phenomenon. Every moment many invaluable species are on the verge of extinction and more importantly the synergetic effect of all these local problems was visible in the form of global problems - ozone depletion, green house effect and global warming. Therefore, in order to clean up the world, in which we were living, government of the industrialized and wealthy world wanted all the nations and industries to agree to act together.¹ This led to the debate on the need of environmental soundness to arrest further environmental degradation. The major steps towards this goal was in the form of educating world people about need and importance of environmental soundness which came in the form of “Earth Summit ’92” at Rio De Janeiro in1992. Environmental education played very crucial role in conserving resources and promoting ecologically viable technologies which the key for sustainable development.

Undoubtedly, prior to highly publicized Earth Summit ’92, relatively few people had heard of the term sustainable development. Since that time, it is not exactly a household word, there has been rapidly growing interest among international organizations, the research community, environmental groups and professionals, and business to learn about “sustainable development,” to promote it and in some cases, to get in on the “next wave” of environmental concern.2  In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the developmental process and cannot be considered in isolation from it. Since the importance and need of sustainable development is understood our idea about the ‘environment as a constraint’ in development has changed to  ‘environment as a partner’ in development, which made the concept of sustainable development practically possible.

Development and environment are inseparably related to each other, though this was overlooked until recent period. Man’s greediness to achieve materialistic luxury and his never ending demands has increased resource consumption to the extent which made very existence of the planet earth impossible. Initiation to rapacious resource consumption started after industrial revolution in early eighteenth century. The countries, which could take part in industrial revolution, were able to use the available resources without any restrictions and limitations mainly because of its free access, which made them economically and politically strong. On the other hand, the poorer countries could just strive for their basic survival and remain economically as well as politically behind rich countries. This gap between poor and rich has many implications on resource consumption and environmental degradation, because the rate at which developed countries consume resources was and is too high comparing to other countries. For instance per capita energy consumption for India was 0.214 Tones of oil equivalent (TOE) during early ninety’s, whereas the figure for Canada and United State for corresponding year is 9.3 and 7.9 TOE respectively. Similarly as per recent statistics, energy for transportation in United State was 100 times more than that for India. With such disparities in rich and poor countries in resource use it becomes difficult to formulate uniform policy for resource conservation for rich and poor world. Now we are at a stage, where looking back and stopping our developmental activities is not possible, therefore we have to look for other alternatives, which will allow economic development with environmental considerations.

Energy is the key element in the production process, and the lack or shortage of energy has serious impact on the economy. Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas are the basis of industrial society, but they are disappearing at an increasing and threatening pace. Present fossil fuel potential is unable to meet the growing demand of our society. There is a need to look for viable alternatives to meet the demand and satisfy the needs of society. The development of renewable sources of energy will increase the diversity of energy sources in a region and thereby increase the security meeting energy service needs.

The regional planning machinery could play a leading role in the sensitive development of renewable resources to the benefit of the environment and the local community. However at present the vast majority of region's planning machinery (at state and district level) has little or no knowledge of the renewable energy potential that exists within their boundaries. Therefore need of educating the people (user, supplier as well as administrator) about environment is stressed by many experts if we want to see the growth of newer non-conventional technologies.

It is common knowledge that centralized energy planning exercises cannot pay attention to the variations in socio-economic and ecological factors of a region at local level, which influence success of any intervention. Therefore decentralized energy planning is considered in the interest of efficient utilization of resources. The regional planning mechanism takes into account various resources available and demands in a region. This implies that the assessment of the demand and supply and the intervention in the energy system which may appear desirable due to such exercises must be at a similar geographic scale.   Ecologically sound development of a region is possible when energy needs are integrated with the environmental concerns at the local and global levels. For this purpose an integrated planning approach to energy planning is necessary.

Bioenergy continue to contribute significantly to the total energy consumption in Kolar, Karnataka, India and most of the developing world. In domestic and rural industrial sector, they play a critical role. In this context it is necessary that the regional planning exercises formulate policies to develop sustainable bioenergy systems consistent with the objectives of ecodevelopment and environmental conservation. However, lack of adequate relevant information on different bioenergy resources in regional planning framework hamper efforts to develop alternatives to achieve multiple goals set by environmental objectives and the energy demand on the resource.  Detailed village level planning would be required, if one has to see the idea of sustainability a dream come true, because the local problems, however small they are finally contributes to the global problems. The continuing demographic and unplanned economic growths are the major threats to sound environmental policy. The environmental gains achieved by more environmentally efficient production are offset by increased pollution due to growths in the volume of production and consumption. Socio-cultural, administrative (integrated planning approaches) and technological breakthroughs are needed if we are to achieve the objectives of sustainable development.

Present paper highlights many sustainability related energy issues in rural area of Kolar District, Karnataka. Based on one-year field research in energy study some criterions of sustainability have been identified and then indicators to those have been explored in the two ecologically distinct clusters of villages. Anthragange (Kolar taluk) and Andrahalli (Chickballapur taluk) which are the ecologically distinct zones, one remote, situated on hilltop, surrounded by forest and other well accessed, agro-climatically sound village were chosen to explore the criteria and indicators of sustainability. This study constitutes a part of Integrated Regional Energy Planning for Kolar district as a part of Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, Energy initiative under NRDMS-UNDP Program. This paper also brings in relationship between energy and related environmental degradation and tries to focus on sustainable energy technologies.