ABSTRACT
Over the last thirty years every South Asian country has seen a remorseless growth in demand for energy. Fuelled both by population growth and economic development, in most of South Asia the use of a range of energy resources has expanded rapidly. The exceptions are in countries or regions, like Afghanistan or northern Sri Lanka, where conflict has interrupted development. Across South Asia all conventional sources of energy such as coal and gas are widely used, though the mix varies greatly from country to country. Hydroelectricity has been a very important source of energy across most of South Asia for decades, and India and Pakistan have had modest contributions from nuclear power. In the last decade, solar and wind have been added to the energy mix, though their total contribution to date to energy production remains under 2 per cent in India, and even less for the region as a whole. Biomass, especially wood burning and animal dung, is a very important energy source in parts of the region, notably India. According to a UNEP estimate, ‘Biofuel consumption is also large for India, but the estimates vary widely. Rough estimates are around 150–250 million tonnes fuelwood, 90–100 million tonnes dungcake and 40–100 million tonnes agricultural residues (Bhattacharya and Mitra 1998). Biofuels, therefore, could be around one half of the total fuel for India. The total biofuel for the entire sub-continent could be anywhere between 300–500 million tonnes as against 300 million tonnes of fossil fuel (1990–91 period) – roughly of the same order’ (United Nations Environment Programme –UNEP 2002).
