India's industrial sector, according to United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), is quite energy efficient - despite being one of the ten worst polluters among industrial nations of the world (according to an unrelated research).

“In the last ten years, India’s manufacturing output grew by seven percent average per annum while industrial energy consumption grew at a much lower rate of 3.6 percent,” said a report titled ‘Performance of Manufacturing Industries of India: Latest statistical evidences’.

The global body's chief statistician Shyam Upadhyaya told reporters, “The manufacturing value added (MVA) has grown much faster since 2000 to 2010 then energy consumption, which implies that the industry is getting more energy efficient. This trend suggested increasing efficiency of energy in India’s manufacturing.”

However, the report lent perspective to the claim saying that though manufacturing accounts for only 27 percent of total energy consumption, what such processes produce may jack the total energy consumption up.

The report mentioned that industries producing non metallic mineral products (cement and brick industry), chemical products, basic metals and textiles are highly energy-intensive. Among the developing countries (excluding China), the report says India is the leader in manufacturing of textiles, chemical products and basic metals. “There is scope to further reduce the energy consumption,” said Upadhyaya.

Unido is also partnering with India on challenges of high energy–intensive sectors in order to bring greater energy effciency. “We are making technology and energy audit and then technology transfer accordingly. More than 70 percent of interventions at the moent in India are on energy efficiency mostly catering towards chemical industry, textiles and rural energy,” said Ayumi Fujino, Unido's representative in India.

India plans to improve energy efficiency. Eight industries – thermal power plants, fertilizer, cement, pulp and paper, textiles, chlor-alkali, iron and steel and aluminium - have been identified for reducing energy consumption. The country will pump Rs. 30,000 crore in energy efficiency efforts over the next three years, under a power ministry initiative.

The government might adopt credit lines similar to the carbon trading. Perform, achieve & trade (PAT) seek to achieve cost efficiency, which will start on April 2011 and is likely to result in savings of 10 million metric ton of oil equivalent energy.

The report also noted that with the strong economic performances in the last two years, India has emerged as the top ten manufacturers in the world. It also said that the world manufacturing is showing first signs of recovery from the recent financial crisis.

The developing countries have also increased their share in world manufacturing output by 32 per cent compared to 20 per cent 10 years ago in 2000.

Read the report