Energy Planning

Currently, energy planning in our country is not an integrated activity. Since there are many energy sources and end uses, there are many organisations and agencies that deal with different aspects of energy. The plans for electricity, coal, oil and fuelwood are made by respective organisations mainly based on the projection of energy demand. The primary goal of this approach is for energy supply expansions on the assumption that there is a correlation between energy use and gross domestic product. With this approach, energy becomes an end in itself, and the focus shifts on meeting increased energy consumption through energy supply expansion alone. This supply and demand based planning approach for each individual energy form has resulted in problems like more losses, more conversions and low efficiencies. This is evident from the disappearance of forests, village wood lots, roadside trees, construction of giant hydro electric dams, fossil fuel based power plants and controversial nuclear plants. This conflict between the energy demand and environmental quality goals can be solved by having an integrated approach to the problem of energy planning with a view to minimise consumption of non renewable resources of energy, to maximise efficiency of energy usage and to harness renewable sources of energy in an ecologically sound way ^[7,8]. Another aspect that has to be considered in the planning process is that of matching energy resources and end uses. Because of convenience, the current usage of high quality energy such as electricity for low quality activities like bath water heating is to be discouraged. Hence, strategies for integrated energy planning should include a) Improvements in efficiencies of end use devices and/or conversion equipments, b) optimising energy source - enduse matching, c) an organised approach towards optimal use of renewable resources, d) proper exploitation of biomass energy resources and e) discourage use of depletable resources (by penalising) ^[9,10].
Our earlier studies brings out vast scope for energy conservation in the energy sectors. Highlights of these studies are

1. The domestic sector in rural areas shows that there is scope for savings of 42% in the quantity of fuelwood used by switching over from traditional stoves to improved stoves ^[11,12],
2. In electro metallurgical industry, efficiencies of 14% in welding sets, 10.4% in furnaces, 24% in cranes and 36.5% in diesel engines shows vast possibility for improvement in enduse efficiencies in all sectors ^[13],
3. Energy analyses carried out for the food processing sector revealed that most of the industries are utilising less than 50% of installed production capacity. The low power factor when motor is under loaded, leads to inefficiency. It is estimated that 23- 38% of the energy could be saved at improved efficiency due to full utilisation of installed production capacity ^[14],
4. Usage of solar water heaters, for water heating (bathing and washing purposes) could bring down electricity consumption in urban area and fuelwood consumption in rural areas ^[15,16].
5. Harnessing hydro potential in ecologically sound way by means of mini/micro/small hydro potential in hilly districts. It is estimated that about 1250 million units per year could be generated in the Bedthi and Aghnashini river catchment alone in Uttara Kannada district ^[17] and
6. Harnessing solar and wind energy in coastal regions of Karnataka ^[18,19]. Our estimate shows that, coastal taluks and arid zones in Karnataka have good potential to install solar devices.