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The Bachat Lamp Yojana' (save lamp scheme), aimed at demand side management, is likely to get implemented at the national-level by next year, Manu Mudgal, Technical Specialist, Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), government of India, said.

A pilot project undertaken by the Union ministry of power in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, to promote the use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) is at the validation process at United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), he added. Girish Sant, co-ordinator Prayas Energy Group, told  that six lakh CFLs were distributed among households in Visakhapatnam at a cost of Rs 15 each.

The Bachat Lamp Yojana aims at the large-scale replacement of the incandescent lamp or ordinary bulb in households by CFLs. It seeks to provide CFLs at the price similar to that of the incandescent bulbs and plans to utilize the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol to recover the cost differential between the market price of CFLs and the price at which they are sold, Mudgal said during a seminar on improvement and better implementation of the scheme.

Various stake holders in the scheme including investors, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), manufactures of lamps and experts on energy issues attended the seminar. Prayas, an NGO working for energy conservation, was the co-ordinator of the seminar. Experts on energy conservation Girish Sant, co-ordinator Prayas Energy Group; Daljit Singh, visiting fellow at Prayas; were also present.

The experts pointed out that the high price of the CFL is one of the reasons why people avoid it. They stressed that reducing price of CFLs should be the key aspect of the scheme.

Mudgal said the fund raising will be done with the help of Carbon Credit. "The price of a CFL is about Rs 100. It can be reduced to Rs 15 with the help of this scheme. The difference of Rs 85 could be made up from money generated through carbon credits."

According to experts, in one project around seven lakh CFLs would be distributed. The total expense on one project would be around Rs 8 crore, which would include money spent on buying lamps, distribution and monitoring of the scheme.


Source - Times of India