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"The most critical elements for enhancing India's energy security will depend on measures to increase energy efficiency, augment the energy resource base, both domestic and external, strengthening national oil companies and diversify the current energy mix," said Dr Kirit S Parikh, Member, Planning Commission.

Addressing a national conference on 'Ensuring India's Energy Security-Domestic Measures and External Policy Approaches' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Parikh said that ensuring energy security is a big challenge that the country faces, specially in light of the volatility that the international energy market is currently experiencing.

He clubbed the risks to ensuring energy security under three heads-supply risks, market risks and technical risks - and said that to tackle them it was important that "we step up efforts to acquire energy assets abroad, create strategic reserves and build redundancies in the existing distribution system as also boost R&D in non-conventional energy."

Energy availability should be ensured at the country level as well as at the individual level. Providing subsistence energy to poor and women should be an integral part of country's energy security strategy. Each woman should get minimum amount of clean cooking energy irrespective of her paying ability, he said.

Addressing the delegates, Hardeep Puri, Secretary (ER), Ministry of External Affairs, said that while the sharp decline in international energy prices in recent days was a welcome relief to the country, it should not be taken to be indicative of future price movements. "The key to energy security lay in diversifying our energy resources and for this we should look at acquiring equity assets in Africa, Latin America and in our neighbourhood." he opined.

India's energy security requires concerted efforts on the domestic front as well as on its overseas ventures. Increasing the transparency, predictability and stability of energy markets; improving the investment environment in the energy sector; enhancing energy efficiency and energy saving; diversifying the energy mix; enhanced exploration of domestic hydrocarbon reserves; accelerating the pace of renewable energy and nuclear energy deployment; securing critical energy infrastructure; building strategic oil reserves; reducing energy poverty; and addressing climate change and sustainable development - are important domestic measures for India, said Puri.

He also pointed out that land and water scarcity were the major problems that the country would face in the medium term and these were areas where cooperation with Latin American countries could go a long way.

Welcoming the idea of setting up a think-tank on energy security, he urged the CII to come up with a concrete proposal in this regard.

Source: CII

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