ABSTRACT
Economic growth in India is consistently above 7% and is among the highest in the world. The per capita energy consumption is 439 kg of oil equivalent (KGOE) compared with 1688 KGOE for the world. At the time of independence from British colonial rule (1947), the installed capacity of power plants in India was only 1362 MW, which was increased to 147,403 MW in December 2008. Similarly, the per capita consumption of electricity (as per UN methodology) was only 15 kWhr/yr in 1950 and increased to 704 kWhr/yr in 2007–2008. The commercial energy consumption rate presently is one of the highest at 52.2%. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is directly linked to it. It has been slowly realized that to sustain such growth to help India raise the Human Development Index (from a low of 0.611 to a satisfactory level of 0.8, the per capita energy consumption will be close to 1000 KGOE) and to control emission of GHGs, energy efficiency has to come to the center stage. One of the areas of improvement of energy efficiency is cogeneration as many of the industries are suitable for such applications. This entry presents seven cases in which cogeneration has been either successfully employed or found suitable. Both topping cycle and bottoming cycle cogeneration and one potential case of tri-generation have been reported. It has been found that in many industries in the regions where the energy cost is more than 10% of the total production cost, if the proposed cogeneration system is implemented, it would reduce the energy cost by 50%. The cases include petroleum, coke glass and ceramic, iron and steel, jute, textile, and sugar industries and one university campus. It has been observed that the economic and technological barriers can be overcome by international collaborations.
