Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) Scheme in Thermal Power Plants: A Critical Analysis
The Government of India in 2008, formed the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) under the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE) for National Action Plan on Climate Change. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency launched Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme to target country's energy-intensive industries to reduce its energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. CSE analysis on the effectiveness of the PAT scheme on Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) find that: Energy reduction target given to thermal power plants is feeble which is only around 3 per cent compared to sector's overall energy consumption. Reduction of greenhouse gas emission is only around 2 per cent in one PAT cycle against the annual CO2 emission of 825.6 million tons from the electricity generation. This 2 per cent reduction rolls out from one PAT cycle of three years duration. Data transparency is poor and any data like capacity of the thermal power stations, percentage of energy reduction target assigned to each TPPs, energy reduction achieved by TPPs, plant-wise purchase of ESCerts are not available for the public view and are kept confidential. Thermal power plants show compliance by energy reduction or purchasing Energy Savings Certificates (ESCerts). Having the option of acquiring ESCerts for compliance makes it far less expensive for thermal power plants to demonstrate compliance by installing energy saving measures. BEE framed the penalty for the non-achievers of the PAT scheme. However, the plants which had not achieved the assigned energy reduction in the first PAT cycle are not penalized yet even though PAT cycle -6 is in progress.
