The study of evaluating various industries on the basis of their energy consumption and production is being done for the first time in the country. One of our main aims in doing this study is to generate norms or existing levels of specific energy consumption. The other aims are (i) to compare similar units (ii) to see this dynamics - change with time SEC for an industries.

Since energy consumption by an industry is an absolute quantity, it cannot be used as an index for comparison. Hence the specific energy consumption is used as an index. In India, there is no integrated study conducted on the SEC for various industrial sectors. Ours is one of the first studies involving all forms of energy sources. There are no norms available for SEC of total energy. But norms are available for the consumption of electric energy/unit of production. Hence one of our intentions is to obtain SECs for some industrial groups. This can be a reference for future use and can also be used for comparison with international norms.

As already stated SEC is defined as energy per unit of production or energy per rupee of production. It has been calculated for all the industries who responded to us, but the values are given only for a sample of this group in Table 19. For some groups, energy per rupee is available and for others energy/unit of, production is available. The second category is shown starred in the table.

The energy consumed/rupee varies from 0.011 to 1.78. Table 19 lists for each sector 4 entries for SEC. The first value gives the average, the second one the maximum value calculated for an industry in that group, the third one the minimum value obtained for an industry in that group and standard deviation. The average values vary from 0.22 to 1.73. The standard deviation gives an indication of the variations in SEC. One way of interpreting SEC is to assume that lower SEC's imply better efficiency because we consume lesser energy for the same amount of production. But looking at SEC's for each industrial group can help us in classifying industries as energy intensive or non intensive. This will be useful in the selection of industries to be nurtured in future in the state. Instead of concentrating on higher intensity industries, one can look for and select lower intensity industries or at least try to obtain an optimal mix. In this connection, it may be recalled that Karnataka has an overall energy intensity of 1.96 which is higher than the national level.

In the case of energy/unit of production, we can see that it varies from 5.05 to 17245 - a very wide variation (but the lower value is energy/tile).

Since norms are available for electrical energy, we also calculate the electrical energy consumed/unit of production. This is given in the last column of the table. Some industries like sugar use least amount of electrical energy and some have a higher intensity for electricity. The SEC for electrical energy per rupee of production varies from 0.081 to 0.45. From point of view of electricity, an industry like oxygen has become energy intensive whereas from its overall SEC, it is not highly intensive industry. So when we have acute shortages in electricity, then we can use SEC for electricity to characterise the intensity of industries and use this for selection of future industries.

The SEC is very useful to look at individual members in an industrial group and this may reveal interesting information. Some examples are cited below;

(i) In the case of paper, the min. SEC is 12510 and the maximum is 17245 (38% higher). This shows that possibly one industry can reduce its energy consumption by improving efficiency to the scale of the minimum valued industry.

(ii) In the case of sugar also, the minimum SEC is 5264 units/ton and the maximum is 11162 (112% higher). There is a large possibility here also to improve efficiencies of use.

(iii) For tiles, the minimum value is 4.55 and maximum is 7.65 (68% higher).

(iv) For textiles, the difference (in percentage) is 52%.

(v) Oxygen units have a difference (in percentage) of 70%

The above illustrations show that there is a high probability of efficiency enhancements. It is also possible that in some situations the difference in SEC is due to the quality of the product and not due to energy efficiencies. But whenever large differences occur for similar products, it is desirable to look deeper for the maladies.

The intra group variations in SEC may only show a probability of improvement. Actual improvements can be pin pointed only by a detailed study by the industry concerned. Since energy plays an important role in our life, it is desirable to do energy audit and energy budgeting. Many industries do not even have measurement facilities. But it is a very redeeming feature that many industries in Karnataka are aware of the energy shortages and energy environment linkages. Some industries are already initiating steps for increasing the efficiencies of energy use. This can be seen from the study of variations on SEC for five years. Table 20. lists SEC's for some typical industries which show a change in their SEC's. It does not show industrial groups, but an industry in a group, the group identified by column 1.

From this table, we can see that

(i) The maximum increase is 155% between 1979 to 1984. The heavy Eng. industry should look at this degradation in its efficiency of energy use. The increase is gradual and not sudden.

(ii) An engineering industry has also shown an increase of 100% in 5 years in SEC. This increase is also gradual.

(iii) Surprisingly many of these large increases have occured in engineering industries. Another reason for this increase may be substitution of fuels (like diesel for electricity generation instead of KEB electricity)

(iv) There are some units (8 in number) which have shown a decrease in their SEC values. This might mean (a) increased cost of the product due to demand or (b) better efficiency of use.

We can see from the above that even though general conclusions regarding energy efficiency and SEC can be drawn, we have to go in for deeper studies at the level of individual industries to confirm and pinpoint the lacunae.

Table 21. tries to compare the difference between the ratio of electrical energy to total energy and the ratio of SEC for electrical energy to SEC for total energy. These two ratios should be the same if the industries in the group have similar consumption patterns and efficiencies. A difference (like in the case of paper or tiles or engineering groups) indicates uneven patterns.

The effect of power cut is seen from Table 22. Energy generated by captive diesel sets was very small in 1979-80. The percent ratio between self generation and purchased energy from KEB was only 0.22; but this ratio has gone up to 17.08 in 1983-84. Since the cost of electricity from diesel generators is very expensive of the order of 2 rupees - compared to purchased electrical energy from KEB, this shows that the cost of energy is not an important criterion. In fact lower costs result in wastages. Hence the planners should consider proper costing of energy including replacement costs for generating stations - thereby doing away completely with subsidies. Subsidised energy may not result in lower manufacturing costs. It results definitely in decreased efficiencies and unnecessary use of energy. Same is the case with capacity. Self generation capacity is equal to 69% of the maximum demand.

Proper costing of energy will have the following benefits;

a) Energy consciousness will increase leading to greater energy conservation

b) The anamalous situation that exists now - like people installing diesel/petrol/kerosene generators in their shops factories etc and thereby paying higher costs for energy will be alleviated especially because capital can be generated for additional power plants.

In the beginning it was said that the ratio of electrical energy to total energy consumed by the industrial sector in Karnataka is very high when compared with many countries. Since electrical energy is high quality energy and as it is a derived form of energy, it is desirable to use it mainly for high quality of work - movements and electrolysis etc. It will be appropriate to find out the percent of use of electrical energy for the higher quality of work and the percent used in lower quality activities like heating. Since energy consumption statistics are not available for each end use in each industry, we decided to look at the connected load distribution. The distribution of connected load for various end use activities like heating, lighting, welding, machinery etc was collected from the responding industries. Hence we analysed the connected load figures. Table 23. gives the percentages of load in each category. It shows that 46.55% of electrical load is in the heating category.

Electrical energy need not be used for heating activities. To a large extent substitution of lower quality energy is desirable in all these cases. Such a substitution will not only match source with end uses, but also increase the efficiency of use. This is true in other sectors also.