nadu: Gujarat top large state on new Energy and Climate Index, Tamil Nadu most efficient | India News – Times of India

Gujarat has emerged as the top large state on Niti Aayog’s first State Energy and Climate Index (SECI) announced on April 11. Goa topped the list of eight small states and Chandigarh the seven Union Territories.
The index aims to highlight the states’ performance on a range of energy and climate issues so that the country can keep to its global commitments of increasing non-fossil fuel power and reducing the emission intensity of the economy substantially by 2030.
After Gujarat at the top of the list of 20 large states were Kerala, Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand. Goa was followed by Tripura and Manipur among the small states, and Chandigarh by Delhi and Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

How the index was made
The index lists the states and territories on six broad parameters that look at their power distribution companies’ (DISCOM) performance; access, affordability and reliability of energy supply; clean energy initiatives; energy efficiency; environmental sustainability; and new initiatives such as electric vehicle penetration. The inaugural index was based on 2019-20 data.

The SECI evolved from the Niti Aayog’s State Energy Efficiency Index that in 2020 evaluated states and Union territories on 68 qualitative, quantitative and outcome-based indicators.
By bringing in green initiatives, the new index wants to focus on the measures to mitigate the climate impact of the energy sector, which accounts for 75% of India’s greenhouse gas emissions, said the report.
The SECI looks at 27 indicators that are broadly split by weightage into the energy sector’s efficiency (55%) and climate initiatives (45%).
The report highlighted the paucity of data on some parameters. Almost half the states had no data on electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and four states had no data on EV penetration. Large states such as Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh lost out on overall rankings because of gaps in such data.
Tamil Nadu best on efficiency, Chandigarh on sustainability
Tamil Nadu outshone all others on energy efficiency, with a score of 85.4 against the all-India average of 29.05. The parameter counts efforts to save energy in industrial, public, and commercial buildings and the overall energy intensity. Almost half the states scored more than the India average, though not nearly as high as Tamil Nadu.

India’s commitment at the Paris Agreement in 2015 on curbing greenhouse gases translates to decreasing the emission intensity of its GDP by 33-35% of the 2005 level by 2030. It has already cut this count by 24% between 2005 and 2016.
SECI’s environmental sustainability parameter shows the path on how to do more on the count. It measures the emission intensity of the state GDP, use of renewable energy potential, change in forest cover over 2005, and the forest carbon stock, which is the amount of carbon sequestered and stored in a state’s forest ecosystem.
On this count, Chandigarh scored the highest of 62.5 against the national average of 37.7, whereas Chhattisgarh brought up the rear with 5.8. Overall, the smaller states scored better as most of them – Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur and Nagaland – topped 40.
Laggards such as Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand need to improve on the count if the country is to achieve its global climate commitments, the report noted.