India to increase its energy efficiency by 20%

India today said that in the 11th five-year plan period it intends to increase its energy efficiency by another 20%. "In the past decade or so, India has been able to deliver eight to nine per cent growth in our economy with energy use growing about 5-3.7%," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Special Envoy on Climate Change Shyam Saran told a group of Indian reporters here. "India has energy conservation act in place which has identified nine energy intensive sectors," he said after the two-day meeting of Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change held at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department here. "In a sense the energy efficiency of our growth has been coming down and the reason for this is that the real prices of energy in India are some of the highest in the world. If you look at energy pricing in India in the context our GDP, in the context of per capita income, you will see that the energy prices in India are very high," he said. "This is what has spurred a great deal of effort in energy efficiency. The energy intensity of our growth has been going down, which also means that the carbon intensity of our growth is going down," he said. Saran said the Indian Government has set mandatory energy audits, has mandated energy standards, and also have energy conservation building code. "We gave a sense of how we are going about improving our energy efficiency," he said.