With an investment of US $10 billion dollars in energy efficiency improvements, India’s economy would benefit from its potentially vast annual energy savings of 183.5 billion kilowatt hours, according to a new report from the World Resources Institute (WRI), says this news item from Renewable Energy World.
A key element in realizing this potential is the energy service company (or ESCO) sub-sector. ESCOs operate on the basis of energy-performance contracts, wherein revenue is earned based on the amount of energy cost savings produced. In India, the ESCO industry had an annual growth rate of 96 percent from 2002 to 2007 and is estimated to have grown by an additional 62 percent in 2008.