India is one of the most energy efficient economies in the world and now stands to become the global leader in energy innovation says a new Emerging Economy Report released by the Centre for Knowledge Societies (CKS).

The report finds India aas the top energy efficient economy among the leading emerging economies that include Brazil, China and South Africa. It also points out that per capita, not only China and India but most emerging economies remain far below the energy consumption as well as carbon emission levels of industrialised economies.

China's CO2 emission of 2.6 thousand metric tonnes per 1,000 people is far below the 10.16 thousand metric tonnes per 1,000 people for Germany.

Similarly, Indonesia's per capita energy consumption of 21.5 million Btu is higher than India's (12.6) but it is almost negligible when compared to its more economically developed neighbours like South Korea (170.2 million Btu per capita) and Taiwan (181.5).

The report forecasts that confronted with the high costs of energy as well as the prospect of climate change, emerging economies will become energy innovators in future.

"Many emerging economies have tiny carbon footprints in comparison with industrialised economies,'' says Dr Aditya Dev Sood, founder and chief executive officer, CKS. ''Yet some of them are highly energy efficient: this means that they create more economic value per unit of energy consumed. However, as the GDP per capita of these nations increases, their demand for energy increases, and their carbon footprint balloons! The only way out of this logic is to pursue energy innovation."

While the government is seized of the need for better access to energy in order to power India's continued economic growth, their efforts have been primarily diplomatic in nature. This is because with 17 per cent of the world's population, India has only 0.8 per cent of the world's fossil fuel reserves. The government has sought to ensure India has maximal access to diverse sources of energy from different parts of the world. Dr. Sood and his collaborators address energy innovation in the report from several directions, focusing on how people actually use energy in their everyday lives.

The Emerging Economy Report describes several opportunity areas whereby energy innovation can be pursued. The concept of 'Osmotic Utilities,' offers a new paradigm for domestic appliances and technologies, which would not only consume energy, but also generate it, even feeding it back to the urban grid. Today, electricity, gas, water, and media mostly flow into an office or dwelling, and are therefore metered in only one direction.

In future, however, these resources might be stored or even generated so that they could feed back to the grid as and when necessary. Consider for example a micro wind turbine atop a house or sitting outside an apartment window, feeding a set of eco-neutral storage batteries that power media appliances through the home, and even houses next door. According to the emerging economy report, osmotic utilities could be key to creating new energy communities of the future.

Dr Sood said the concept of osmotic utilities was generated collaboratively by the international team of specialists working on the Emerging Economy Report, based on observations coming directly from the field.

"We looked at heat saving techniques from China, cooking techniques from rural areas in India, kitchen technologies from Indonesia. And we were seeing certain energy-saving patterns in all of them, whereby one or another mechanism was serving as a two-way valve to release or store energy within the system. That's why we called this concept 'osmotic,' after osmosis, which happens in a membrane."

The concept was inspired by the observation that in many emerging economies, including India, power is in short-supply and there can scheduled or unscheduled power-cuts during the day. "The non-availability of continuous and reliable power has some downsides, but one major upside is that the entire ecology becomes used to surviving without it. We wanted to build on this adaptive side of emerging economies, which use all kinds of inverters, battery back-ups and alternative energy techniques as an alternative to regular power supply.''

'Informationalising' energy systems
As emerging economies continue to grow, however, the report predicts that they will want to make more and more efficient and intelligent investments into infrastructure, so as to make their economies more sustainable. The report points out that even though educated consumers want to be more energy efficient in their everyday life, they have limited options, as most of the decisions concerning the energy and environmental costs of different activities are scripted into the infrastructure that makes them possible.

One of the important sections of the report, in fact, is called ''Intelligent Infrastructure'', which deals with new kinds of public amenities in both urban and rural environments that can generate their own energy, monitor their usage, and enable their users to plan and coordinate with one another in better ways. Zackery Denfeld, an energy and human factors specialist who also worked on the report called this approach the "informationalisation of energy systems."

In order to come up with this model for energy optimisation, the report team studied how very rural and remote families in India made plans to travel into the city. They found that social networking and coordination was very important for people who did not live near regular bus or train hubs. They contrasted these findings with data from Indonesia, where even scooters and rickshaws have their own stands, which can also serve as social spaces for waiting travellers. "What we understood from these examples is that if we can help people reduce their travel costs as well as help the environment by creating infrastructure that helps them coordinate their travel with one another."

These concepts sound attractive in theory, but would they work in practice? The CKS team working on these and other energy concepts at their studios in Bangalore seem confident. "Our whole approach is about actually driving innovation," said Saswati Saha-Mitra, who also worked on the report. "While in the Report we are interested in describing key scenarios, in our regular consulting work we actually work with technology, product and service companies and their customers to put these kinds of scenarios into practice. What we do in the field is truly rewarding, because it benefits our clients, their end customers as well as the environment."

The report often uses insights and terminology from the telecommunications industry to provoke new thinking in the energy sector. This kind of cross-disciplinary thinking was possible on account of the composition of the team behind it. Zackery Denfeld, works with CKS from Bangalore, India, but is originally from Michigan in the United States. He was enthused at the collaborative nature of this study, "A report of this kind is couldn't have been written out of India in any other decade. The team brings together an amazing variety of talents -  design, anthropology, economics, ergonomics, and straightforward business thinking. The Report is truly a case of globalization now becoming a two-way process."

The report focuses on seven countries: India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Brazil. These key regions of the world, were included in the study because they are "experiencing informationalization under conditions of limited or partial industrialisation." Dr Sood explained that this report was dedicated to understanding the new directions in which these economies and societies are headed. "In our conception, emerging economy refers not only to a growing economy, but more importantly to a new kind of economy. One based on information, technology and knowledge."

Other Energy-related findings from the Emerging Economy Report:

Energy efficiency leads to energy innovation: Emerging economies are energy scarce and therefore energy-efficient. They are creating innovative just-in-time and very local techniques for energy creation, redistribution and management. Increase in energy inputs result in consequent economic growth but Emerging Economies will have to chalk their energy usage well in order to keep their footprint light.

Emerging economies determine global energy negotiations: These economies will play pivotal roles in reducing the environmental anxieties that are growing worldwide. They have the opportunity to voluntarily moderate their carbon emissions for global environmental benefit and market advantage. Environmental concerns and carbon footprints will be the next major global dividers over emissions commitments negotiations and implementation.

China and India lead the market for carbon credit: In the future, carbon credit will become a future source of major national income for the emerging economies. The global carbon credit market is estimated to be around $30 billion of which India and China together comprise roughly two-thirds of $5 billion.

Intelligent Infrastructure for Green Energy: Infrastructure gets smarter as utilities become more diffuse and users make energy decisions that are appropriate for them. The intelligence about energy needs and requirements is best known to the user. Power decisions will be progressively taken by consumers.