Natural death of Energy Savings Certificates

<p>Saving energy was a big time requirement at the turn of this century! Across the world every country launched its own scheme for energy conservation. </p><p>Much in line with the Renewable Energy Certificates that had both a positive and negative side, this too had two sides. One who use renewables got RECs while those who were polluting the environment had to buy them off from them, in proportion to their polluting power consumption. Similarly, based on the PAT scheme, Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme, the Ministry of Power launched the Energy Savings Certificate (ESCert) back in 2012. All this happened under the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE) in 2008 which were to meet the climate change needs of the nation.</p><p>However, the last of the efforts to popularise ESCert was taken up by Bureau of Energy Efficiency way back in Feb 2018 almost a year back. And nothing much is being talked about, anyway.</p><p>A closer look at what really happened to the certificates is also worthy of noting. More than 38 lak certificates were issued, according to a press release by Piyushji way back in May 2017. However, till Jan 2018, only about 1.1 lak certificates were sold on the IEX which is the forum for selling these certificates. The price they commanded in the market also fell down from Rs.1,200 per Certificate to close to Rs.450/- by mid January 2018!</p><p>After setting the Designated Consumers (or DCs as they were called) further expansion was planned to cover all the industries. In the phase I, the implementation went through well. However, over a period of time, making purchase of these certificates mandatory in order to meet the targeted energy optimisation never really happened.</p><p>Much like the RECs, ESCerts are also non-starters when it all began. But RECs have got a second lease of life once government took it seriously and ensured that the utilities who are really the government organisations, should buy RECs to meet their obligations! It is important government and government bodies are the first set of people who obey the laws laid down by the government. This could be reason why ESCerts are not really making much headway.</p><p>Every person who is a proponent of climate change control and energy efficiency would request the government to give a second lease of life to the Energy Savings Certificate. </p>

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