Stalled on the road to the market: Analysis of field experience with a project to promote lighting efficiency in India

摘要

Several factors have been recognized in the energy policy literature as constraints that have retarded the wide-scale diffusion of high-efficiency appliances. In the developing countries, despite the apparent benefits of energy efficiency as an answer to problems in both environment and development arenas, the diffusion of highly-efficient appliances has been limited. Research suggests that these appliances appear more attractive from the collective or societal perspective than from any one actor's viewpoint, and that current market and institutional arrangements do not automatically allow for an efficient sharing of costs and benefits. There is little incentive for individuals or organizations to promote increased energy efficiency on their own. This paper outlines the differing perspectives of consumers, utilities, and appliance manufacturers and describes the resulting barriers that appear in the Indian electric sector. An attempt to overcome these constraints, by means of a field experiment in Bombay, is then described. The project was to lease high-efficiency lamps to households where their use would reduce evening demand, thus saving or freeing up badly-needed peak power. A consortium of the north Bombay utility, a lighting manufacturer, and a local research institution was convened and jointly developed the Bombay Efficient Lighting Large-scale Experiment (or BELLE). The practical progress of BELLE and the lessons learned in attempting to get it off the ground are described. Participants learned that the purely economic constraints that BELLE was designed to address are not the only factors that can influence the diffusion of increased-efficiency appliances: the project encountered resistance from other organizations, leading to the refusal by a review committee of the consortium's request for access to hard currency. The paper concludes with an assessment of factors that led to the proposal's failure and some thoughts on next steps.